Prioritizing Natural Areas for Habitat Restoration in Parks of Hamilton County through Use of GIS

Abstract

The majority of land within Great Parks of Hamilton County (GPHC), Ohio, USA, is managed as natural area; and while threats to preservation are growing more numerous, resources to manage these natural areas are limited. We develop a quick method for GPHC staff to prioritize the natural areas in GPHC parks through the use of GIS tools and existing data. This study applies the scoring approach, which evaluates candidate sites individually using scores for multiple factors and then selects priority sites from the top of a ranked list. Three sets of multiple factors are used to compute the prioritization index, and they generate similar priority index maps. This method will help GPHC staff to make a better plan for habitat restoration activities in their parks.