With support from REIP Woods Institute Fund
This project works to engage Stanford-affiliated researchers from around campus, students, and land managers in collaborative endeavors to produce conservation solutions. Land trusts and open-space preserves have successfully conserved more than 56 million acres of land across the United States, yet land managers are often limited in resources and capital to make research- and data-based decisions. Building on a current Stanford applied course, Open Space Management Practicum, this project will provide tools, personnel, and forums to support affiliated faculty and students in integrating basic and applied natural and social environmental science research into land-trust conservation practices. Through partnerships with land managers, these collaborations will have the opportunity to contribute to decision-making around open-space reserve management and long-term conservation planning. Key to this project is the creation of a digital atlas coalescing existing remote sensing and mapping data as a starting point for co-developing research questions. The project will expand current university–land trust collaborations and use those existing relationships to develop a suite of tools that can help inform a model of how universities and land trusts might create on-the-ground conservation impact.