Many of our most pressing problems are caused by the rift between people and place thanks to industrial development. When it comes to making decisions about complex natural systems, we've got the technology to help.
It may seem counterintuitive to think that technology can help people reconnect with nature. But through tools that facilitate planning processes integrating human use in natural systems, Ecotrust is enabling communities and planners to make decisions for a more regenerative future, bridging the gaps between people and place.
Our custom tools answer specialized questions for their unique users — from the best place to build a culvert for salmon habitat restoration to the return on investment for small forest landowners who want to harvest trees on their property. However, while the goals of each project might differ, we’ve found that these tools can be loosely divided among four categories: Scenario planning, optimization, collaborative design, and suitability.
Scenario Planning tools
Scenario Planning tools assist decision makers who have a set of pre-defined prescriptions and want to see how they play out differently measured against specific metrics. For example, with our ForestPlanner tool, users enter basic information about their forestland then identify different forest management practices they want to use on their property. Based on their previously defined management requirements, the tool returns information about wood harvested, long term standing volume, carbon sequestered, and aquatic and terrestrial wildlife habitat. Most small property owners typically can’t afford to create sophisticated management plans that are unique to their property, making ForestPlanner a powerful tool for leveling the playing field.
Ecotrust has developed a number of Optimization tools to help decision makers create a path or process for getting to a clearly defined goal. For example, the juniper management tool we built for the Bureau of Land Management enables land managers to determine how to most efficiently spend limited budget dollars on juniper removal in Eastern Oregon. With these kinds of tools, users specify a set of objectives typically related to the amount of a particular habitat they want to restore or conserve — such as acres of juniper that need to be removed — and the tool identifies optimum locations for restoration that will also help the agency minimize their costs.
Collaborative design tools
Collaborative design tools enable decision makers and stakeholders from a wide variety of backgrounds and opinions to come together to create plans. There are no political boundaries or borders in nature, making collaboration an essential part of the process for good land and marine use management and planning. Through these collaborative efforts a variety of needs, concerns, inputs, and outputs are considered — creating the demand for a set of tools designed to facilitate a highly transparent stakeholder engagement process. The MARCO Ocean Data Portal is an excellent example. This platform hosts a wide array of maps recognized as essential data for ocean-use planning efforts by partners across the region, organizing mapping tools and resources in an easy-to use and visually compelling design.
To help land managers and others evaluate spatial data (usually maps) to better understand opportunities and limitations of on-the-ground action — such as riparian habitat restoration — we’ve developed Suitability tools. These types of tools also help users with access to limited data make better decisions for a specific area, providing a step-by-step process to fill in available information and guide users through what options best suit their area of interest. For example, our Prospect R tool was developed to help conservation groups and funders determine whether the habitat benefits of restoring mine sites located in a floodplain would outweigh the costs of doing the work.
Ecotrust’s long history of building tools for complex decisions has come with a lot of lessons learned. Through our work we have gained a better unde