An approach for greenway suitability analysis
Introduction
Greenways, sometimes referred to as environmental corridors, landscape linkages, wildlife corridors, or riparian buffers, provide an important means to both protect natural areas and to provide recreation opportunities (Little, 1990; Ahern, 1995). Greenways contribute to many ecological and societal values (Fabos and Ahern, 1995). They help maintain biological diversity, protect water resources, conserve soils, support recreation, enhance community and cultural cohesion, and provide species migration routes during climate or seasonal change (Forman, 1983, Forman, 1995; Forman and Godron, 1986). Greenways can be used to create interconnected networks of open space that may include more traditional non-linear parks and natural areas. They can help to maintain ecological integrity in human-dominated landscapes, especially with regard to sustaining high-quality water reserves and preserving biological diversity (Smith and Hellmund, 1993).
Local officials and citizens frequently advocate the development of greenways and other open spaces to improve environmental quality or their communities. Many citizens, elected officials, and landscape planners seek a better understanding of concepts and procedures for more sustainable greenway development. Greenway planning methods are needed to perpetuate ecological processes and to conserve wildlife populations while affording continued human interaction with the natural landscape.
The most difficult challenge is to design for social and cultural settings which permit people to maximize their needs without generating future social and environmental problems. This dilemma points out the need for new multi-objective greenway planning methods. These planning methods can be applied to the protection of threatened ecosystems and outdoor recreational system as well.
Better research methods are needed to accurately assess and analyze environmental constraints and opportunities. Socio-economic and ecological data must be prepared so that meaningful comparison can occur. Technological developments such as geographic information systems (GIS), when combined with the suitability analysis methods, may provide the necessary tools for the integration of these data into a meaningful database. These databases have the potential to enable planners to integrate both social and ecological interests in multi-objective greenway planning.
The purpose of this paper is to test the hypothesis that the integration of suitability analysis with GIS will provide an effective tool for greenway analysis that blends both socio-economic and ecological data into a comprehensive land management plan. This approach is based on the premise that successful greenway suitability analysis can serve as a foundation for a greenway plan.
The development of suitability analysis has a strong tradition within landscape planning (Hills, 1961; McHarg, 1969; Murray et al., 1971; Steinitz et al., 1976; Steiner, 1983; Linden, 1984; Banai-Kashani, 1989; Searns, 1995; McHarg, 1996). This paper addresses the design of a greenway suitability analysis for a rural area of the American Southwest (Collins, 1996).
Section snippets
Study area
The study area is located approximately 80 miles (128 km) northwest of Phoenix, Arizona (USA), and incorporates approximately a 45 square mile (115 km2) section of central Yavapai County. It is a scenic, predominately rural area which includes the town of Prescott Valley (Fig. 1). Within the last 10 years the area has experienced rapid growth, and significant changes in land-use patterns (Fig. 2).
Method
There are five major steps involved in suitability analysis, these include: identification of land-use functions, spatial data collection, development of weighting values, data integration and analysis using geographic information systems (GIS), and output evaluation.
Greenway function identification and weighting
Review of the Prescott Valley General Plan revealed three important greenway functions necessary for the basis of a greenway suitability analysis. These functions were:
- 1.
Protection of natural riparian corridors and their associated functions towards groundwater recharge and surface water runoff.
- 2.
Preservation of open spaces for wildlife habitat and more specifically the protection of sensitive antelope habitat areas and travel corridors.
- 3.
Provision of multi-use recreation areas and amenities to
Discussion
We recognize that the 14 criteria evaluated within the process are not independent of each other. Ideally, each criterion would relate to a specific concept or factor, each being completely independent of each other. The inter-relationship of factors and functions, however, presents the primary opportunity to propose and test new factor ranking processes such as the one for this project. We also recognize problems of adding radio values such as those attained when evaluating the inherent
Conclusions
This project was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of using GIS and suitability analysis for multi-objective greenway suitability analysis. The method involved the identification and ranking of greenway suitability functions, factors, and capabilities. The result of implementing the proposed method was a map which categorized and illustrated the different levels of greenway suitability throughout the given study area. This suitability map provided helpful knowledge on the interaction of
Acknowledgements
We appreciate the suggestions by John Meunier, Kim Shetter and Jon Rodick on a previous draft of this paper. We thank Chris Duplissa for her work on word-processing the manuscript and her help in preparing it for submission.
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