Southeast CASC Science Seminar: Incorporating the Benefits of Natural and Working Lands in Conservation Planning

Southeast CASC Science Seminar: Incorporating the Benefits of Natural and Working Lands in Conservation Planning

Join us for a virtual science seminar series highlighting SE CASC funded projects supporting resource management actions across the Southeast. Each month SE CASC researchers will provide an overview of their work and the management implications of their research findings.

Seminar Title: Incorporating the Benefits of Natural and Working Lands in Conservation Planning

Presenter: Katie Warnell, Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions

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Webinar Overview:
Natural and working lands – forests, farmlands, and wetlands – make up more than 80% of North Carolina’s land area and provide a variety of benefits to our communities and economy. The importance of these lands is increasingly being recognized in state-level planning (including the Natural & Working Lands Action Plan, part of the NC Climate Risk & Resilience Plan) and funding (for example, the 2021 state budget dedicated $15 million to the Land & Water Fund specifically for floodplain protection and restoration projects), and both state agencies and conservation organizations have expressed interest in better understanding and communicating the broad range of benefits provided by the lands they manage. In this talk, we will discuss our work over the past several years to support consideration of natural and working land benefits in planning by developing spatial datasets to answer key questions, making relevant data and information more accessible, and helping conservation organizations expand their consideration of co-benefits beyond their main objectives. Read more about recent products from their work.

Learn more about the speaker:

Katie Warnell is a policy associate in the Ecosystem Services Program at the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University. She has worked on a variety of projects to incorporate ecosystem services into decision-making and planning contexts, including state-level natural and working lands planning for climate and resilience benefits in North Carolina, metrics development for tracking benefits of coastal restoration projects in the Gulf of Mexico, and mapping changes to coastal habitats and blue carbon due to sea level rise on the east coast. Katie has a master of environmental management degree and geospatial analysis certificate from Duke University.

Learn more about our science seminar series: https://secasc.ncsu.edu/science-seminars-collection/