Conservation Prioritization in the SuAsCo
Land protection is one of the most cost-effective ways to safeguard nature’s services and mitigate the effects of climate change. Yet, with limited funds available for protecting land, we must focus on protecting those lands that will have the biggest impact.
To encourage and support collaborative land protection strategies that will conserve the highest priority lands in our 36 communities, SVT worked with the Metrowest Conservation Alliance (MCA) to design an online Conservation Prioritization Multi-Model Viewer that helps users assess the conservation values of every undeveloped parcel in the SuAsCo Region. We also developed an accompanying Story Map that explains the foundation of the project.
Conservation Prioritization Multi-Model Viewer
The interactive Multi-Model Viewer helps users identify the lands in the SuAsCo Region that are the highest priority for protection based on four themes: Nature's Services, Habitat Biodiversity, Farmland, and Community Conservation. The viewer can identify priority areas at the boundaries of towns and should facilitate collaborative conservation partnerships.
(The original tool, developed in 2022, had four separate data viewers. As of January 2025, these have been combined into a single Multi-Model Viewer that lets users easily toggle between the four views.)
Story Map
Our Conservation in the SuAsCo Story Map describes the four conservation themes that are covered in the Multi-Model Viewer. The Story Map also includes a Process Documentation Report that describes the data and GIS analyses that we used to create the data viewers.