Futurity specializes in analyses for conservation planning. Land cover conditions, species habitat and land management opportunities are integrated to assess risks, emerging trends and management options.

Land Cover Conditions
Changes in land cover conditions are often difficult to visualize. To detect, analyze and communicate these changes, Futurity works with remote sensing and geographic information systems (GIS). Remote sensing is used to analyze satellite imagery and produce land cover maps. GIS is used to compare a map of conditions on one date with that of conditions on another. This serves to isolate the extent and nature of change. Such knowledge enables organizations to more clearly see conditions including threats to watersheds; threats to species habitat; or opportunities for land acquisition.

Habitat Quality
Futurity integrates knowledge of species life requirements with remote sensing and GIS to identify and assess habitat. Using species life requirements as a guide, Futurity first defines which land cover categories are needed to identify and assess habitat. The acquired satellite image is then analyzed according to this classification scheme to produce a land cover map. GIS analysis of this map identifies potential habitat and habitat quality, enabling organizations to develop specific habitat management strategies.

Water Quality
Watershed management -- protecting and restoring the hydrologic system -- is a priority for many communities and organizations. Futurity uses GIS to identify and quantify both threats and assets to regional water quality. Water quality is threatened by a number of factors including point and non-point sources of pollution. Point sources of pollution are identified and mapped according to pollutant type, drainage area, and outfall location. Areas of non-point source pollution (NPSP) are identified by analyzing relationships between land use and storm water runoff.

Open Space Protection
Recreational needs and natural resource management can both be addressed through open space protection strategies. These strategies require access to diverse datasets including parcel maps, tax assessor records, habitat quality, and land-use. Futurity uses GIS to assimilate this information and make recommendations regarding the nature, size and management of open space parcels and connecting greenways.

Coordinate management efforts
The efforts of local conservation groups can often be advanced through coordination with other local or regional groups. Through GIS, Futurity has the ability to link organizations, such as land trusts, watershed management coalitions and habitat protection groups to political and natural resource mapping units. This connection enables analysis that provides advanced information by determining the combined and interrelated roles of organizations.

For more information about Futurity's conservation planning capabilities, view other site resources:
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