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This study investigates the consumption of electricity and natural gas for building operations for several categories of residential and non-residential buildings. The study updates the Production Exchange Consumption Allocation System (PECAS) land use modeling framework to include energy components. An energy database was assembled to study energy consumption in buildings. The authors conducted statistical analysis of utility data and estimated linear regression models to predict energy consumption in buildings. Results are validated using data from independent sources, including the California Residential Appliance Saturation Study (RASS) and the Commercial End-Use Survey (CEUS). Results are used to update PECAS and form part of the baseline study to estimate energy and greenhouse gas balances in an urban metabolism framework for the analysis of the environmental impacts of complex urban regions. The results also allow the total energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions for residential and commercial building operations to be estimated through the application to the total residential and commercial building inventory in the region. These results are then useful for the evaluation of possible energy savings in buildings.

Fresno County is a rich agricultural area that faces rapid urbanization and farmland conversion. The county is participating in a strategic, multi-county planning initiative aimed at making sustainable and regionally cohesive land-use decisions. To inform this effort, we conducted a farmland conservation assessment and identified strategic farmlands for prioritization in future conservation efforts. We identified environmental and human predictor variables that affect the viability of existing farmland, used a geographic information system (GIS) to integrate them, and created a countywide strategic farmland conservation map. We compared our analysis to status quo methods of prioritization and found that with our model the spatial output of highly valued farmland was shifted, narrowed and located adjacent to some of the county’s most urbanized areas. These findings are influencing growth policies and farmland conservation planning in Fresno County.

Global human population transitioned from a rural to urban majority in 2008. The struggle to accommodate urban growth while simultaneously conserving natural resources will be felt around the globe. The capacity to project urban growth scenarios that reflect various public policies so that their relative impacts can be evaluated on natural resources is broadly needed. We developed a framework for such analyses by using a spatially explicit urban growth model to project seven different growth scenarios that represent a range of public policies. The outputs were analyzed in terms of their impacts on 14 types of conservation priority lands. The scenarios covered policies that ranged from "Business as Usual," to "Farmland Soils Protection," to "Compact Growth." At state-government convened meetings, regional scientists identified and assembled the 14 key conservation priority data layers reflecting high value open space and conservation opportunities. We assessed the impact of each projected urban growth output with each conservation priority layer. The scenario with the least overall ecological impact was the Compact Growth Scenario; the Great Cities Scenario was also relatively low. Because of its efficiency and ease of use, the general availability of needed data, and its suitability for use by local governments, the method presented here could be incorporated for other regions of the world where working landscapes are negatively affected by urban growth. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

We report on the multi‐year process of developing the California PECAS statewide integrated land use/transportation model and the preliminary results of a sensitivity test. In the Trend 2030 Scenario, the model allocated economic activities and developed floorspace in a plausible pattern, when viewed statewide or regionally. In the High Fuel Cost Scenario, a more‐compact development pattern was found. We conclude that the initial demonstration model performed reasonably well. The chief problems that we encountered are discussed and our future work is outlined.

This study presents a GIS-based database framework used to assess aggregate terrestrial habitat impacts from multiple highway construction projects in California, USA. Transportation planners need such impact assessment tools to effectively address additive biological mitigation obligations. Such assessments can reduce costly delays due to protracted environmental review. This project incorporated the best available statewide natural resource data into early project planning and preliminary environmental assessments for single and multiple highway construction projects, and provides an assessment of the 10-year state-wide mitigation obligations for the California Department of Transportation. Incorporation of these assessments will facilitate early and more strategic identification of mitigation opportunities, for single-project and regional mitigation efforts. The data architecture format uses eight spatial scales: six nested watersheds, counties, and transportation planning districts, which were intersected. This resulted in 8058 map planning units statewide, which were used to summarize all subsequent analyses. Range maps and georeferenced locations of federally and state-listed plants and animals and a 55-class landcover map were spatially intersected with the planning units and the buffered spatial footprint of 967 funded projects. Projected impacts were summarized and output to the database. Queries written in the database can sum expected impacts and provide summaries by individual construction project, or by watershed, county, transportation district or highway. The data architecture allows easy incorporation of new information and results in a tool usable without GIS by a wide variety of agency biologists and planners. The data architecture format would be useful for other types of regional planning.

Government agencies that develop infrastructure such as roads, waterworks, and energy delivery often impact natural ecosystems, but they also have unique opportunities to contribute to the conservation of regional natural resources through compensatory mitigation. Infrastructure development requires a planning, funding, and implementation cycle that can frequently take a decade or longer, but biological mitigation is often planned and implemented late in this process, in a project-by-project piecemeal manner. By adopting early regional mitigation needs assessment and planning for habitat-level impacts from multiple infrastructure projects, agencies could secure time needed to proactively integrate these obligations into regional conservation objectives. Such practice can be financially and ecologically beneficial due to economies of scale, and because earlier mitigation implementation means potentially developable critical parcels may still be available for conservation. Here, we compare the integration of regional conservation designs, termed greenprints, with early multi-project mitigation assessment for two areas in California, USA. The expected spatial extent of habitat impacts and associated mitigation requirements from multiple projects were identified for each area. We used the reserve-selection algorithm MARXAN to identify a regional greenprint for each site and to seek mitigation solutions through parcel acquisition that would contribute to the greenprint, as well as meet agency obligations. The two areas differed in the amount of input data available, the types of conservation objectives identified, and local land-management capacity. They are representative of the range of conditions that conservation practitioners may encounter, so contrasting the two illustrates how regional advanced mitigation can be generalized for use in a wide variety of settings. Environmental organizations can benefit from this approach because it provides a platform for collaboration with infrastructure agencies. Alone, infrastructure agency mitigation obligations will not satisfy all greenprint objectives, but they can be a major contributor to the ongoing process of implementing ecologically sustainable regional plans. © 2009 by the author(s).

In the next 40 years, the eight counties of the San Joaquin Valley are projected to double in population from 3.3 million to more than 7 million (Great Valley Center 2006). The region faces many challenges with respect to its capacity to accommodate this dramatic increase in population while maintaining its environmental infrastructure and preserving its diminishing natural resources.In response to these growing pressures, Governor Schwarzenegger announced in June 2005 the formation of the California Partnership for the San Joaquin Valley (Partnership) to “the economic well-being of the Valley and the quality of life of its residents” (Department of Business Housing and Transportation 2006a). This 26-member Partnership, led by the Secretary of the Business, Transportation and Housing Agency, is composed of eight state government members (primarily cabinet level appointees), eight local government members (primarily members of county boards of supervisor), eight private sector members (representing leadership in various business sectors), and two deputy chairs. The Partnership region includes San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Merced, Madera, Fresno, Tulare, Kings, and Kern Counties.The Information Center for the Environment (ICE) at UC Davis supported the Partnership by providing geographic information system (GIS) data and growth allocation build-out scenarios. Based on input from the Partnership and the Great Valley Center, ICE developed and produced seven urban growth scenarios for the region that project popula¬tion to year 2050 using UPlan, a rulebased GIS urban growth model (Johnston et al. 2006). These scenarios were developed based on different goals (such as Compact—within current spheres of influence; Farmland Protection—prime farmland masked; Great Cities—create “mega-cities” in concentrated regions) and produced vastly different outcomes.This paper discusses the seven growth scenarios and the implications of mapped future urban growth in the San Joaquin under those scenarios on a collection of biologically significant factors. A team of federal, state, and non-government organization biological experts selected 14 key biological layers crucial for protecting high value open space in the San Joaquin Valley. ICE combined the modeled urban growth output for the seven growth scenarios with the 14 biologically significant GIS layers. The growth scenarios reflect seven different policy directions that the region’s leaders may choose when planning for growth in the upcoming several decades. Results showed that depending on the scenario chosen (and hence the policy emphasis), the magnitude of biological resources likely to be lost varies significantly. The scenario with the least overall ecological impact is the Compact Growth Scenario (Scenario 3), with Scenarios 6 (New Cities) and 7 (Great Cities) also fairly low in relative impact. Scenario 4 (Prime Farmland Protection) resulted in the largest decline in the acreage of the 14 key biological data layers we examined. Scenarios 5 (I-5 to Highway 99 Exclusion), 2 (East/West Road Improvement) and 1 (Status Quo) also showed relatively high negative impacts.

We are developing a statewide urban growth model for California. It will be run in iteration with the California statewide travel model to evaluate major transportation improvement scenarios, such as freeway widenings and high speed rail. In addition, we will evaluate land use policies intended to provide for more affordable housing and for habitat protection. This model is uniquely capable of providing performance measures for total travel, travel delay, mode shares, economic development, wages, economic welfare, economic equity, rents paid by households and firms, energy use in vehicles and buildings, greenhouse gas emissions, vehicular air pollution, loss of agricultural lands, habitat loss, and erosion potential. We propose a framework for interpreting all of these data, based on recent advances in the theory of well-being for persons and for nations.

The University of California Information Center for the Environment (ICE) and the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) are developing a GIS-based analytical framework to improve the effectiveness of biological mitigation throughout California. Goals include incorporating the best available sets of mapped natural resource data into the early project planning and preliminary environmental assessments for single and multiple projects. Incorporation of these data will facilitate early and more strategic identification of mitigation requirements and op¬portunities, for both single-project and regional mitigation efforts.The cost of delays and over-runs due to late and fragmented project-by-project environmental planning and mitigation in California is estimated at $75 million per year. Developing systematic GIS-based decision-support tools to identify important species and habitats, both those impacted directly by Caltrans activities and those that might contribute to effective mitigation in the same locale or watershed will permit Caltrans, counties, and environmental regulators to incorporate the results of biological impact assessments earlier in the planning process, and identify opportunities mitigating the combined biological impacts of many projects in a given area. By building upon previous efforts and using tools known to be effective for integrated analyses, this project will help Caltrans improve planning results, decrease costs, improve project delivery schedules and provide greater environmental protection in the long-term.To accomplish these goals, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) analysis and conservation planning principles are being applied to develop multi-scale longrange (10-year) mitigation need forecasts for each Caltrans district, county, and watershed in the State of California. These will be used to determine the cumulative mitigation needs for early biological mitigation planning of multiple projects in a given area. Available statewide biological data have been integrated into a database that can be queried by Caltrans district, county, or any of six levels of watershed classification. For a queried geographic area, the database returns the biological resources expected to exist in the area based on the available data, as well as the potential impacts to these resources from Caltrans projects that are currently funded to be constructed in the area over the next 10 years. The type of project programmed to occur was then used to estimate the impact zone of each project (e.g. road repaving, road widening, new road, etc.). Then, by querying the database for a given geographic region, the area, habitats and species potentially affected by cumulative biological impacts from all programmed highway projects in that region can be estimated. From this, estimates of area and types of lands that would need to be acquired for mitigation can be determined.This project provides a framework for analyzing and estimating biological mitigation needs that could be generalized for use in transportation planning in other geographic areas, as well as for other types of planning. The database schema developed here could easily be adapted to analyze the potential impacts and mitigation needs for urban growth planning efforts, and other development projects with biological impacts that require biological mitigation planning. Overall, by integrating available data into a useful database format, this project has developed a system for assessing long-term biological mitigation needs that will assist in the implementation of early biological mitigation planning.

One-foot resolution imagery is used to develop a detailed land cover map for part of Highway 99 in the San Joaquin Valley of California, US. The land cover map is used to model the probability of occurrence of 12 endangered or threatened species and as input to an urban growth model to examine the likelihood of development of every map unit. The combination of the two model predictions permits the categorization of every map unit with a potential endangered species richness index and predicted degree of development. Polygons with high potential endangered species richness were ranked according to the degree of development pressure. This planning approach is computationally intensive, but the input data are relatively easy to assemble, consisting of: a detailed, and fine-scale, land cover map; species presence locations; statewide climate and landcover maps; a parcel ownership map; population growth projections; and a digital map of the county general plan.

The Merced County Association of Governments (MCAG) was chosen by the Federal Highway Administration, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the California Department of Transportation to pilot a new program, Partnership for Integrated Planning (PIP), which aimed to: streamline planning and the project-delivery process; avoid environmental impacts; foster collaboration among planning, transportation, and environmental agencies; and engage the public at the beginning of long-term transportation planning.Merced County provides a challenging test case through rapid population growth, cultural diversity, high unemployment, and increasing conflicts between stewardship of sensitive habitats and prime farmland and demands for transportation improvements and housing.The Partnership for Integrated Planning (PIP) included the development of geographic information system (GIS) tools for modeling growth and environmental impacts to produce real-time maps and tables resulting from policy choices at public meetings. PIP engaged all regionally relevant planning, natural resource, and regulatory agencies in data-sharing exercises to integrate data important to each agency into the scenario testing and planning process. Most importantly, the Merced County Association of Governments (MCAG), which is the coordinating partner in PIP, led an extensive outreach program to engage the community in PIP.To project land-use changes, we adapted UPlan, a rule-based land-use model developed at the University of California at Davis. UPlan incorporates user-controlled policy inputs ranging from general plan map choices, housing densities, and household labor rates to the ranking of environmental amenities. These are combined with user-settable infrastructure growth attractors to distribute population-growth estimates into spatially explicit land-use scenarios. UPlan stores all user-specified assumptions so many scenarios may be tested against one another in a transparent fashion. We evaluated information needs by asking planning agencies which features (such as roads and urban service boundaries) they considered attractions and discouragement factors for growth. Resource agencies were asked what environmental factors should discourage or constrain growth. All agencies were asked to provide all available and relevant data.This shared information resulted in an Environmentally Sensitive Areas (ESA) map and a Prime Agricultural Lands map. These two maps were evaluated at a workshop attended by resource agencies’ representatives, elected officials, and city and county planners. Contributors included over 20 federal, state, and non-governmental organizations.Like most public agencies, MCAG has historically solicited public input for regional transportation planning from a few community workshops. For example, in 2001 the agency held seven workshops for its previous plan. Under PIP, MCAG held 20-32 meetings each quarter, for a total of 100+ public meetings in 18 months. In addition, MCAG replaced the previous narrow focus on transportation by asking county residents to develop a vision for land use, natural resources, and transportation throughout their community. MCAG mastered the use of UPlan and accompanying environmental data and improved substantially on both throughout the course of these public meetings.Historically, transportation-plan approval has run into considerable public and agency opposition. Federal officials in the last decade have attempted to streamline the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA, which is California’s NEPA equivalent), and other permitting procedures. A goal of PIP was to find a method for responsibly arriving at a consensus plan with less conflict, particularly in the environmental-review phase. The Regional Transportation Plan was approved by the MCAG Governing Board and received no opposition during the CEQA Environmental Impact Report (EIR) public-comment period.Results of the Partnership for Integrated Planning model include:* 800 percent increase in public participation in the transportation-planning process * 89 percent of participants said they enjoyed the PIP project * 89.1 percent of participants said they learned more about transportation issues * 30 percent increase in awareness of the Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) among all county residents * New issues brought to the surface from county groups who had not previously participated in the process * Better relationships were built at both the county and city level among civic organizations, agencies, and residents * RTP was approved by the MCAG Governing Board and received no opposition during public-comment periods * Development of an Environmentally Sensitive Areas map based on shared information from a variety of resource- agency databases * Development of a Prime Agricultural Lands map based on input and information from a variety of agricultural interestsFurther research is needed on the portability of this information and this tool-centered collaborative approach. Adjacent counties with similar needs are prime candidates for study. In addition, future projects should include measures of the social and political planning decision network structures existing before and after the conduct of such projects.

Developing regional assessments of environmental needs can help streamline the environmental-review process for transportation projects, thus leading to faster and less-costly reviews and more effective biological or ecological mitigation. This study is a demonstration of a rapid-assessment approach using a high-resolution vegetation map derived from agency data to model 12 endangered or threatened species’ potential occurrence on 6638 polygons. Those units, occurring on 44 capacity-improvement sites along the 315-km of State Highway 99 in the study, were classed to measure their degree of similarity, thus permitting estimates of the potential for multi-project mitigation planning.

The first fact to know about CARA is that participating groups or individuals collectively felt that scores of sets of facts were critical to their individual or cooperative work with California's rivers. In all, 99 sets of statewide, regional, or local data were integrated directly into CARA. Links were created to another 206 internet providers of information.CARA contains 39 sets of mapped geographical information system(GIS) layers, 60 sets of tabular (database) and textual text) data, as well as links (internet connections) to 510 additional maps, tables and texts located on other servers. All of this data is organized by watershed and theme. CARA makes the data available to interested parties over the internet for a wide variety of analytical and management purposes.

The Sacramento, California, U.S.A, Area Council of Governments (SACOG) commissioned the Information Center for the Environment, University of California, Davis (ICE) to assemble a suite of the best available region-wide GIS data depicting natural resource values and conservation opportunities for the six County, 6,500 square mile (16,830 square kilometer) Sacramento, California region. This region is planned and managed by a large and diverse number of government entities and it contains a population of approximately 2,000,000 with a wide range of natural resource and economic interests. The purpose of this commission was to create a visual, conceptual tool depicting and weighting natural resource variables that are of value to the many parties of interest in land use and conservation planning in the region.

The Information Center for the Environment (ICE), UC Davis, is currently developing a decision support system to facilitate watershed analyses by state resource agencies in California. ICE is using the latest in ESRI GIS to provide resource managers critical environmental data, including a desktop application with embedded GIS to facilitate watershed analysis. This tool incorporates readily available GIS data such as biotic occurrences and distributions, hydrography and geomorphology. Other relevant data are task specific, such as staff reports, water quality matrices, and site location photographs. The approach used is adaptable to assessing a broad array of conservation priorities in natural resource management.

The Navarro River watershed hosts one of the last extant populations of coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) in the Central California Evolutionarily Significant Unit. As such, the identification and restoration of riparian habitats in the Navarro River watershed is paramount to the continued survival of this coho salmon population. This study utilizes a modeling procedure to identify priority locations in the Navarro River watershed using a geographic information system (GIS). This riparian habitat modeling method was used to identify priority restoration sites in the Navarro River watershed. The modeling structure emphasizes a hydrological metric, wetness index, and several landuse – land cover parameters. This GIS based model of the Navarro River was used for selecting potential riparian restoration sites, and used to demonstrate the utility of the model for selection of potential salmonid habitat. The results of analyzing the similarity between two model runs, one emphasizing habitat potential and the other anthropogenic degradation, indicate that riverine–riparian habitats have been disproportionately affected. This effort is offered as a potential tool to aid resource managers and local stakeholders with a method in which to initiate protection of aquatic ecological systems and coho salmon habitat in particular.

The Information Center for the Environment (ICE) at the University of California, Davis has been cooperating with various federal, state, and local agencies on the Natural Resource Projects Inventory (NRPI) to locate and catalog watershed-scale environmental management and restoration projects throughout the State. One of the goals of NRPI is to represent these projects spatially so they can be viewed in conjunction with other critical data layers. Currently, 1,464 projects are spatially referenced out of a total of over 1,700 projects in the NRPI database. This spatial online database will allow the public and decision makers to derive more effective conclusions regarding ecological restoration.

In 1998, the California Regional Water Quality Control Board (RWQCB) scientists were trained to use the Geospatial Waterbody System (GeoWBS), developed by the Information Center for the Environment (ICE). The Regional Board scientists are currently using the system to report waterbody assessments to the EPA, as mandated by the Clean Water Act. As part of ICE’s continuing work with the GeoWBS database, ICE staff members visited each RWQCB in California to assist the scientists with geographic delineation of waterbodies that will be included in the 303(d) report.

Riparian habitats in the California hardwoods zone are slowly being converted from natural landuses to permanently anthropogenic landuses. Riparian habitat is important for species diversity, water quality, and recreation. CA Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF) Hardwoods Rangeland Monitoring Project's map of the riparian areas in the hardwoods zone was combined with the UCSB California Gap Analysis Managed Areas map to show the area of the riparian habitat in the study not protected from development. Using ARC/INFO GRID, it was found that, of the approximately 2,780,000 acres of riparian mapped by CDF, 65% is privately owned and not managed for biodiversity. A digital elevation model (DEM) was used to determine which riparian areas were on slopes of

ICEMAPS2 is a new Internet mapping service of the Information Center for the Environment. It is based on the new technology of MapObjects, and MapObjects Internet Map Server. ICEMAPS2 exceeds its predecessor, ICEMAPS (based on PERL and Arc/Info), in performance and functionality. The success implementation of a MapObjects based map server has cut development and maintenance time dramatically. Future versions of ICEMAPS will most probably be based on ODE Arc/Info technology.

The California Rivers Assessment (CARA) is a computer-based geographic data management system designed to give resource managers, policy-makers, landowners, scientists and interested citizens rapid access to essential information and tools with which to make sound decisions about the conservation and use of California's rivers. CARA is intended to provide an evaluation of the environmental conditions of California's rivers by integrating existing data from previously uncoordinated contributors and organizations, and to improve river conservation and management by making this information available and useful. The assessment utilizes a suite of watershed facts, processed in ESRI’s ARC/INFO and ArcView Geographic Information System software, to provide an objective view of the watershed integrity of California's riverine resources. These watershed facts focus on existing riparian and aquatic resources: biodiversity, water quality, and resource management activities. Access to this multi-leveled, interconnected database of California watershed environmental data is provided and enhanced by innovative World-Wide-Web technology.

The California Riparian Evaluation System (CARES) is a habitat evaluation tool designed to be used by decision makers who are not experienced with GIS. The current version was designed for the Wildlife Conservation Board of the California Department of Fish and Game to support their analysis of how riparian habitat restoration funds should be allocated. CARES, developed by the California Rivers Assessment (CARA) staff at the University of California, Davis, allows for the identification of riparian areas of high quality and diversity which are at risk or which have a high potential for conservation or restoration. The system is comprised of a state-of-the-art ArcView 3.0 graphical user interface through which users may alter evaluation criteria priorities to match conservation goals. The application operates by allowing users to specify a mapping of the domain of a coverage onto a [-1,1] score. The users may then specify relative weightings for each variable and construct a map of the normalized sum of the weighted scores. Results are displayed as ArcView shapefiles which highlight potential sites for conservation based on criteria chosen. Currently five data layers are available for inclusion in the user-defined criteria selection: Land Use/Land Cover, Land Management Status, Flow Regime (Natural or Altered), Potential Plant Species Richness, and Potential Vertebrate Species Richness. It is straightforward to add more layers to CARES as requested by users. The CARES system has recently been ported to Spatial Analyst which dramatically reduces processing time.