The ICE Models:  

January, 2000

Uplan, An Urban Growth Model

Heplan, A Habitat Evaluation and Planning Model

The purposes of these GIS models are:

1. Use in the Statewide Habitat Assessment process.

2. Use for the assessment of the cumulative impacts of urban growth, under CEQA and NEPA.

3. Developed in ArcView to run on a PC. Demonstrated on the Sacramento region. Free. Easy to use.

4. State agencies may wish to support these models and to disseminate them to local governments. Several states support local planning with GIS help.

The Heplan Habitat Evaluator and Planner

Bob Johnston and Jim Quinn, UC Davis (11/99)

Objectives of Habitat Planning:

1. Represent all kinds of ecosystems.

2. Maintain viable populations of all native spp., in natural

3. Sustain ecological and evolutionary processes.

4. Maintain a conservation network resilient to change. "Adaptive management."

5. Handle uncertainty in data and theory. "Precautionary principle."

Criteria for Reserve Selection:

1. Protect special elements (hotspots, ecotypes, watersheds).

2. Representation of all habitat types.

3. Maintain viable populations of focal spp. (large carnivores).

4. Be responsive to other policy constraints and opportunities.

So, Heplan must be able to:

1. Display all special elements in coverages (NDDB, AMAs, TNC picks, old growth, etc.) and allow you to pick all, or some, of them;

2. Display habitat types and permit selection, based on criteria for size and number and quality of patches; and

3. Allow users to protect single animal spp., or groups of spp., by relating spp. to habitat types.

4. Give the odds that each spp. is protected, after doing the above steps. It focuses our attention on the data and the value assumptions.

Tests for Heplan

Fall, 1999 and Winter 2000

1. Validate WHR projections (animals X  veg. types) against good datasets for animal species occurances.

2. Sensitivity tests of different theories of habitat value.

          a. If users come up with widely varying habitat areas, then we have high uncertainty. We suspect this will be the case.

          b. Under high uncertainty, we need to:

                    (1) buy time to get better data and theories, and

                    (2) seek to avoid bad decisions (as well as seek good decisions).

          c. This means we may need to reverse the normal procedure and map not only the best habitats to protect, but we need to also map the lowest priority habitats on private and public lands and permit development (urbanization, logging) to occur on only these lands.

          d. This requires that we add into the Local Planning Act a requirement for a habitat plan in all county General Plan conservation elements. The State must pay them to do it. Phased growth would be required, that keeps growth on known low-priority habitats. Field work would be required before areas can be designated for urban growth, until a regional habitat plan is developed.

State Habitat Planning Process: Effectiveness

1. Because of the complexity of the State, it will probably be done in two phases, statewide and local. Statewide, 2000-2002?

2. The local planning for each habitat opportunity area will not be effective, unless the Statewide phase includes binding policies governing the second phase.

           a. qualitative policies: "No more spp. will become endangered and all endangered spp. will be permitted to recover."

           b. quantitative standards: percentages of each habitat type to be protected in each Opportunity Area. Recovery periods for endangered spp.