Land-Use Evaluation

In many rural settings natural resources and high-valued environments are under constant threat from further development. Regional jurisdictions require comprehensive tools in order to soundly manage land-use that preserves and promotes the integrity of the landscape.

Five E's Unlimited works with clients on rural land-use issues to produce "smart systems", designed for regional application, that can significantly enhance the abilities of jurisdictions to make sound decisions on land-use planning and sustainable development. We employ landscape ecology methods, coupled with such tools as Geographic Information Systems (GIS), for identifying at-risk rural communities, resource lands, and other valued natural/cultural assets determined important in maintaining integrity of the rural geography.

Using GIS maps and formulating several alternative scenarios of action, Five E's can help clients visualize the likely impacts of exercising urbanization, agriculture, forestry, conservation, or residential development options. Patterns of social, economic, and environmental conditions can then be pictured as a mosaic for which housing development, business formation, transportation, tourism, agri-business, education, and social welfare and/or public health programs can target the most appropriate areas for action.

We Can Help You to Accomplish the Following.

• Engage stakeholders in planning and decision making (i.e., those who depend upon, utilize, live within, manage, administrate, or otherwise care about a place and its biological resources).
• Build decision-making capacity. The planning and implementation of activities requires skills and experience that are often not found in one organization or community. Partners need to build a range of scientific, technical, social, and policy capabilities.
• Promote cooperation between organizations and institutions already working in the area to develop management options that balance local concerns with society's larger interests.
• Ensure the collection and analysis of spatial data on landscape structure, changes in conditions, their position through time, and the application of these data to an adaptive landscape management strategy.
• Develop and interpret landscape data in Geographic Information Systems format for futuring evaluation and decision-making activities.
• Offer numerous alternatives for group consideration and consensus- building regarding the patterns of regional, sustainable development that might be decided upon.

FIVE E'S PROMOTES CLIENT USE OF LANDSCAPE ECOLOGY in its work. Clients find our use of landscape ecology valuable as an approach to resource management and planning because of its emphasis on understanding the ecological, social, and economic consequences of changes in urban and rural landscape composition. Merging tenets from geography, sociology, economics, and ecology, this approach helps us understand how humans interact with the built and natural environment to ensure sustainable land-use and protection of natural resources and cultural assets.

We find this to be the most comprehensive way of conserving watershed natural resources. Landscape ecology seeks to improve community and government management of critical biodiversity lands at an eco- regional/watershed scale and focuses on creating economic and social incentives for local natural resource conservation and open space preservation, as well as guide future development of rural land. See our pages on Integrated Watershed Assessment client services for more detail.

Experience of Five E's Unlimited in Land-Use Assessment work includes the following.

1. Research and management designs to address rural coastal issues using a multi-discipline framework that links protection of coastal environmental quality with sustainable land-use plans and associated economic development.
2. Study of sustainable agricultural practices that mediate environmental impacts and also allow family farms to stay economically viable while providing good jobs.
3. Research to define the extent of the Virginia Eastern Shore freshwater aquifer for developing conservation and alternative water management plans, as well as least-impact land-use strategies.