Last month, Aaron had an opportunity to speak alongside Rob Krain about the Parcel-based Ecological Restoration Model (PERM) at Rally 2022. While the conference took place in New Orleans, you can still view the presentation from anywhere! The model that Rob and Aaron presented on was developed by GEOACE in partnership with Black Swamp Conservancy.
What’s the PERM FOR?
The PERM serves as a starting point when identifying land suitable for restoration across Black Swamp’s territory. In total, the model covers over 6,500 square miles in Ohio and evaluates more than 650,000 parcels in a single process. The datasets used to evaluate each parcel’s restoration potential span multiple resolutions – from a local scale all the way up to a Global scale. Each parcel is ultimately scored on a scale of 1 to 100 and added to a map. The five major categories that make up the total score are Land Cover, Agricultural Restorability, Hydrology, Connectivity, and Suitable Soils. High scores in all of these categories will then score highly in the PERM’s total score.
Customizable Land Areas
One nice thing about the PERM is its ability to score custom-created tracts of land as well. This is especially helpful in instances where multiple parcels become available for sale at the same time. In this type of circumstance, all you’d have to do is merge the parcels together and run them through the model in ArcGIS Pro. Doing this helps to gather supporting documentation and justification (or the opposite) for any purchase your organization may be looking into. So whether you’re shopping for parcels straight from the auditor or in an area of your own creation, you’ll be able to score the land relative to the rest within your operating territory.
There’s so much to talk about with the dataset. We’d love to spend some time going more into detail about the nuts and bolts behind it. If you’re interested in knowing more, you can view Aaron’s Rally 2022 presentation here. Or if you’d prefer, we’d love to take any questions you have about it. Just contact us for more info!
