Modeling Open Space Acquisition in Boulder, Colorado

Purchasing land for open space use is crucial for municipalities that are concerned with conserving land and mitigating urban sprawl. Land-use modeling measures the ecological vs. economic trade-off. This book develops a land-use modeling system termed Modeling Open Space Acquisition (MOSA) that quantifies the ecological value of land targeted for open space acquisition. MOSA is designed as a decision support tool for local policymakers to identify ecologically rich parcels that can be targeted by using a multi-criteria model. Each parcel in the study area (Boulder, Colorado) is ranked by weighted criteria generated from a variety of public data sources. The weighted criteria include wildlife habitat, agricultural lands, historical sites, recreation corridors, vegetative biodiversity, riparian wetlands, parcel proximity, and parcel size. MOSA provides supplemental evidence to quantifying, targeting, and prioritizing parcel acquisition for preservation. Governing agencies can benefit from land-use modeling where parcel acquisition is evaluated from a scientific classification of natural resource capital over a parcel¿s economic value alone.