Learn about the emphasis objective sliders
In the platform, you build prioritized projects based on the management objectives you and your partners want to emphasize. There are 8 objective categories you can emphasize. All SARAs fall into the following 8 objective categories:
- Assets - homes, businesses, and utility infrastructure
- Safety - ingress and egress routes, cellular communication towers, emergency services, air quality, and community fire transmission zones
- Recreation - trails, recreation related buildings, parking areas, aesthetics, and viewsheds
- Biodiversity - known nesting and denning areas, important habitat, rare plant areas
- Ecological Commodity - plantations, mining claims, and mushroom foraging sites
- Wildlands Health - areas of high aboveground biomass
- Water - strategic watershed, riparian areas, ground water recharge zones, erosion potential
- Science & Culture - scientific test plots, sites of archaeological or cultural significance, university buildings, monitoring stations
These objectives incorporate the base SARAs included in every Vibrant Planet landscape, as well as any of the custom SARAs you may have loaded onto the platform.
Emphasizing Objective Categories
Each objective category can be weighed up to five times higher than other categories. A weight of zero means that the objective categories RO score would not impact where projects are identified, and a weight of a five means that an objective categories RO score would be weighted five times higher than an objective with a weight of one.
For example (pictured left) a user may build a scenario in which safety is prioritized three times greater than Assets, two times greater than Water, and nothing else is being prioritized.
Vibrant Planet helps make the comparison of these objectives possible. As partners weigh their objectives, the platform maps the highest opportunities for risk reduction on a per-acre basis. The darker the blue polygon, the highest the opportunity to reduce risk, based on that objective. As objectives shift, the maps shift.
For example, see how three groups may weigh different objectives:
- Group 1: Fire district - Prioritize assets and safety 5 times higher than all other objectives
- Group 2: Climate change nonprofit - Prioritize wildlands health and water 2 times higher than all other objectives
- Group 3: Forest service - Prioritize assets and safety 3 times higher, and recreation and water 2 times higher than all other objectives
As you can see, the opportunity to increase resilience is similar but not identical across these three examples.
Science Corner: Risk calculations based on opportunity
When a user toggles an Objective’s weight, the color of the STELA polygons is updated in real-time to reflect the weighted-sum of Objective RO on a per acre basis for each polygon in the choropleth map. Darker shades represent areas with higher RO values per acre, while lighter shades reflect areas with lower values. The effect of weighing Objectives can be seen by turning on the strategic areas, resources, and assets layers associated with those Objectives while moving the Objective weight sliders. Polygons that have a zero or negative weighted-sum of Objective RO will not be displayed as they would be excluded from any scenarios generated using that set of Objective weights. Zero or negative ROs may occur due to a lack of relevant SARAs in those polygons or a negative impact from the selected treatment (net for all Objectives weighted). Sometimes SARAs matching the weighted Objective(s) will be sparse, especially in small Planning Areas. If no polygons have positive RO for the chosen Objectives, Land Tender will display a notification message; polygons with positive Objective-weighted RO are required to proceed to scenario building.
In the next section, we’ll explore how the platform utilizes these collaborative priorities and implements into a sequenced, prioritized plan.