Challenges & Opportunities

Biophysical Assessment

Many state trust land managers lack inventories of the conservation values that are associated with their state trust land portfolios. These inventories that would be helpful in guiding state trust land decision making particularly with regard to asset management strategies and in the identification and prioritization of conservation and mitigation opportunities on state trust lands.

The State Trust Lands project has collaborated with The Nature Conservancy (TNC) to produce a west-wide biophysical assessment regarding the ecological values found on state trust lands in 10 western states – Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. This GIS-based analysis provides a regional perspective by showing overlaps between state trust lands and ecologically significant areas, as well as providing details on the characteristics of various trust parcels, including the conservation elements for each parcel.

This analysis was made by marrying the extensive GIS data that the Project has developed and collected on state trust lands with the ecoregional assessment GIS data that TNC developed to identify and prioritize specific areas of the landscape that if managed appropriately will conserve the biodiversity of the Earth.