Agren Projects

Conservation Planning Software

The Challenge:

Proper conservation planning takes time. Planning agencies often lack adequate resources to provide one-on-one consultation with landowners and operators. Conservation planners identify a need to speed the planning process to allow them to consider multiple practices and provide more options to landowners.

Agren's Solution:

Agren, in cooperation with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, is developing a GIS-based expert system to facilitate the use of Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR) technology for conservation planning. Recent advances in LiDAR digital elevation collection technologies have resulted in faster, cheaper, and far more accurate digital elevation models than traditionally available. With the increased accessibility of GIS (geographical information system) software to conservation planners and the coming availability of LiDAR digital elevation data, the potential application of these two resources to conservation planning is considerable.

Stakeholders from across Iowa gathered early in the three-year project to discuss potential applications for these two technologies and evaluate criteria for the final product. An expert panel was convened to fine-tune the solicitation document to secure a software development firm that will create the decision-support tool.

Our staff charted a decision-support system and will work with the selected software developer to integrate this system with LiDAR and GIS to create conservation planning tools. A server system will be set up to distribute LiDAR to conservation planners and agencies.

Comparisons will be conducted between LiDAR data and data collected through traditional methods. As the project nears completion, we will facilitate four in-field trainings to pilot the planning tool and will create an on-line help desk.