Conservation planning tools for NC's people & nature

An introduction and user's guide to two new tools from Conservation Trust for North Carolina & Duke University

Conservation organizations and land trusts in North Carolina are increasingly focused on how their work can contribute to both human and ecosystem resilience and adaptation to climate change, as well as directly mitigate climate change through carbon storage and sequestration. Recent state executive and legislative actions also underscore the importance of natural systems for climate adaptation and mitigation, and may provide additional funding for conservation and restoration for those purposes in the near term.

To make it more efficient for conservation organizations working in North Carolina to consider a broad suite of conservation benefits in their work, the Conservation Trust for North Carolina and the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability at Duke University have developed two online tools for identifying priority areas for conservation action and estimating benefit metrics for specific properties.

The conservation prioritization tool finds the sub-watersheds in North Carolina with the greatest potential to provide a set of user-selected conservation benefits. It allows users to identify priority areas for future conservation work within the entire state or a defined region. This high-level tool allows for quick and easy exploration without the need for spatial analysis expertise.

User's Guide
Benefits Calculator
Prioritization Tool