The VCLNA can be utilized as a decision support tool for local and regional agencies and organizations in their efforts to employ green infrastructure principles during their planning processes.
We encourage people to review these products, to try to use them to accomplish conservation goals, and to consider ways in which they could be improved to accomplish current projects more effectively or to enable their use in future projects.
We encourage local and regional agencies and organizations to implement conservation actions using these data and analyses. As a robust, well-documented GIS model, the Virginia Conservation Lands Needs Assessment can be creatively tweaked to offer practical uses for a variety of needs. The ability to add data makes it an excellent framework for future development of protection and growth planning tools.
There are no legal or regulatory requirements associated with Virginia Conservation Lands Needs Assessment, nor should the VCLNA serve as sole justification for any activities. The VCLNA is a rather coarse-scale analysis that, though informative, needs to be considered in conjunction with any number of other factors in guiding conservation actions or any other activities. DCR is continuing to work on the VCLNA to identify some of these additional decision-guiding factors, but economic, local, and even personal considerations will always be important in decision-making.
The data will be available in GIS format for in-house use, as well as available in hard copy maps for reference. Maps produced from the VCLNA can provide an organizational medium for planners to inform and engage the public at a variety of scales. Be sure to understand what data are and are not presented on each map. Ultimately, we envision serving the VCLNA up on an interactive web site, where individuals will be able to influence the weighting parameters of the model to draw their own conclusions for their plan.
Page last updated 4/06.
