Protected Area Tools - Spatial Decision Support Knowledge Portal

Protected Area Tools
Compare against SDS Workflows

The development of Protected Area Tools (PAT) was conceived as part of an ongoing process to help fill the technical void that exists in many countries of GIS-based user-friendly tools that support the process of evaluating and filling protected area gaps.

Acronym

PAT

Overview

It is hoped that Protected Area Tools (PAT) will continue to evolve and provide utility for evaluating land purchase/acquisition for achieving maximum return on investment in terms of overall contribution to a country’s conservation goals. In addition to questions that may be asked about the best remaining core habitat or covering a comprehensive representation of biodiversity, the ultimate question conservation planners want answered is “Where do I get the best ecological return for my conservation dollar?” This question has driven the design of a systematic, logical, and repeatable toolkit that helps planners evaluate activities or events that may be threatening habitat health, identify a comprehensive representation of biodiversity for protection, and configure an optimal portfolio solution for meeting habitat conservation goals.PAT consists of three conservation modules which operate within Environmental Systems Research Institute’s (ESRI) ArcGIS 9.3 Geographic Information System (GIS) software: Environmental Risk Surface (ERS), Relative Biodiversity Index (RBI), and Marxan Tools.

URL

http://gg.usm.edu/pat/index.htm (No Longer Available)

Description Of System Components

ArcView level is req'd for ERS and RBI modules, ArcInfo level and Workstation are req'd for Marxan tools, and the Spatial Analyst extension is req'd for ERS. Also, Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 is req'd for PAT V3.0. Windows 2000 and Vista may encounter problems, so Windows XP is recommended.