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14. ABSTRACT
These proceedings encompass outcomes from the DoD Southeast Regional Planning & Sustainability
Workshop, which took place in April 2007, and reflect the opinions and views of workshop participants,
and not necessarily those of the Department of Defense (DoD). In April 2007, the Department of Defense
(DoD) brought together academic researchers, stakeholders and other experts to discuss new trends and
collaborative land use and sustainability approaches in the Southeastern United States. This Report
reflects the principal conclusions and recommendations from this three-day workshop.
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Standard Form 298 (Rev. 8-98)
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DoD Workshop on Southeast
Regional Planning & Sustainability Report
Prepared for:
DoD Sustainable Ranges Initiative Project Office
and
DoD Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program Office
Prepared by:
HydroGeoLogic, Inc.
11107 Sunset Hills Road, Suite 400
Reston, VA 20190
April 25-27, 2007
Marriott Atlanta Perimeter
Atlanta, GA
FOREWARD
These proceedings encompass outcomes from the DoD Southeast Regional Planning &
Sustainability Workshop, which took place in April 2007, and reflect the opinions and views of
workshop participants, and not necessarily those of the Department of Defense (DoD). This
document is available in PDF format at http://www.serdp-estcp.org/workshops/serps.
The workshop was co-sponsored by two parts of DoD’s Office of the Secretary -- the Sustainable
Ranges Initiative and the Strategic Environmental Research and Development
Program/Environmental Security Technology Certification Program. This Report was produced
in November 2007.
DoD acknowledges the contributions of each of the authors in preparing this document, with
special thanks extended to Dr. Philip Berke for coordinating the input of all of the authors.
Contributing Authors
Dr. Philip Berke – University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Dr. Robert Brown – North Carolina State University
Dr. Michael Elliott – Georgia Institute of Technology
Mr. Paul Friday – US Marine Corps, Installations East
Dr. Robert Holst – HydroGeoLogic, Inc
Mr. Jonathan Weiss – Mantech SRS Technologies, Inc
Dr. R. Neal Wilkens – Texas A&M University
HydroGeoLogic, Inc. supported this workshop and produced the resulting proceedings document
through funding awarded by the DoD Strategic Environmental Research and Development
Program and Environmental Security Technology Certification Program (contract F41624-03-D-
8602).
Recommended Citation: HydroGeoLogic, 2007. Report from the DoD Southeast Regional
Planning and & Sustainability Workshop, 25 – 27 April 2007, Atlanta, GA. Prepared for the
Sustainable Ranges Initiative, Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program, and
Environmental Security Technology Certification Program by HydroGeoLogic, Inc., Reston,
Virginia.
This page was intentionally left blank.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Executive Summary........................................................................................................................ ii
Southeast Regional Planning & Sustainability Workshop Report – Introduction...........................1
Synthesis of Breakout Session Papers: Policy, Research, and Outreach
Recommendations............................................................................................................................7
Highlights of Breakout Session Reports
Agriculture.........................................................................................................................15
Forests ................................................................................................................................25
Land Corridors...................................................................................................................35
Built Environment..............................................................................................................49
Military ..............................................................................................................................63
Conclusion .....................................................................................................................................77
Appendices.....................................................................................................................................79
Workshop Agenda
Workshop Participants
Workshop Steering Committee
Workshop Read-Ahead Papers
Overview on Sustainable Ranges Initiative
Overview of SERPPAS
Overview of SERDP
Overview of ESTCP
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
In April 2007, the Department of Defense (DoD) brought together academic researchers,
stakeholders and other experts to discuss new trends and collaborative land use and sustainability
approaches in the Southeastern United States. This Report reflects the principal conclusions and
recommendations from this three-day workshop.
The workshop, which took place in Atlanta, Georgia, built upon DoD’s increasing interest in
working with outside partners to help ensure the sustainability of DoD lands and resources and
encourage sustainable land use planning in communities and regions near military bases. The
workshop’s development was overseen by a diverse Steering Committee, several members of
which also played active roles in the workshop and in compiling this Report.
The Southeast as a region provided a cutting-edge focus for the proceedings. As described in the
Report’s Introduction, the Southeast is currently undergoing tremendous population growth,
which is placing extraordinary pressures on both the military and communities in the region.
Sprawling land use and incompatible development were viewed by the workshop as an
overriding challenge that impacts all areas of sustainability – economic, environmental, and
social.
In order to identify shared issues of concern among the military and stakeholders as well as
potential collaborative approaches to meet those concerns, the workshop was divided into five
Breakout Groups – Military, Forests, Agriculture, Land Corridors, and Built Environment. The
Report, following the Introduction, integrates the main recommendations from these Breakout
Groups, and divides those recommendations into areas of policy, research, and outreach. It calls
for increased DoD collaborative efforts with researchers and other stakeholders to meet the
sustainability challenges of the Southeast, and identifies a number of promising areas offering
opportunity for future progress. The Report then includes the Breakout Reports from each of the
five Breakout Groups.
Overall, the Workshop participants believe this document provides a creative and helpful
suggested roadmap as the military further pursues changes in sustainability policy, research, and
outreach. From fostering a new generation of military sustainability professionals to creating
“living laboratories” for universities to engage in cutting-edge conservation research, the
proposed solutions offer myriad opportunities for shifting the current thought and behavior
patterns of “business as usual” to more sustainable approaches.
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SOUTHEAST REGIONAL PLANNING & SUSTAINABILITY
WORKSHOP REPORT
INTRODUCTION
Philip Berke
The Southeast region of the U.S. is under intense population and land development pressures.
The need for a stronger military presence and rapid population growth are placing major
demands on the region’s ability to sustain critical natural resources, provide healthy living
environments, offer long-term prospects for economic vitality, and support the military’s mission
that requires space to train.
The Southeast is at a crossroads. Federal, state, and local governments and a wide array of
stakeholders from the private and non-profit sectors must improve their ability to work together
to anticipate and accommodate change within a sustainable regional development planning
framework. Otherwise, the “business as usual” approach that has dominated much of the state
and local growth management systems in the Southeast during the last half of the 20th century
will simply react to change only after significant and often irreversible losses have occurred
(Godschalk, 2007). Most of these systems are in need of an overhaul since they are not capable
of meeting 21st century demands that require change in a more sustainable direction.
This report is a product of a three-day discussion among key stakeholders with an interest in the
future growth and development of the Southeast. The discussion took place during the Southeast
Regional Planning & Sustainability Workshop sponsored by the Department of Defense (DoD)
in Atlanta, April 25-27, 2007. Stakeholders represented many interests groups from the public,
private and non-profit sectors that are active in military base operations; land use planning;
community development; conservation of farmlands, forests and natural areas; and real estate
investment. Representatives from academia in the fields of agriculture, city and regional
planning, forestry, and wildlife ecology also participated.
Goals of the workshop were:
• To identify the high-priority issues of shared concern between the military,
academia, and other key stakeholders related to sustaining military training lands,
regional planning, and compatible land use in the Southeast.
• To explore collaborative approaches – particularly ones that engage the academic
and research community – that can build on existing efforts and help address
these high-priority issues.
The workshop was designed to build upon DoD’s Sustainable Ranges Initiative, including
conservation buffer efforts, increased outreach with partners and surrounding communities, the
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Southeast Regional Partnership for Planning & Sustainability (SERPPAS), and other related
activities.
This introductory chapter provides an overview of the issues and ever-expanding demands for a
more sustainable Southeast as identified by the workshop participants. The next chapter
provides a synthesis of the policy, research, and outreach recommendations across the five
domains discussed in the subsequent papers. The final set of chapters offers more detail on the
major barriers to achieve sustainability and recommendations for policy and research in five core
domains of land use and development in the Southeast: military installations, agriculture,
forestry, built environments, and land corridors.
Major Issues Confronting a Sustainable Southeast
Intense Growth Pressures
Intense land development pressures are a fact of life in the Southeast. With a moderate climate,
relatively low cost of living, diversifying economy, and easy access to beaches and mountains,
the Southeast has become an increasing destination for employment, affordable housing, and
retirement. Population growth rates between 2000 and 2005 reflect the growth pressures
(Godschalk, 2007). Florida leads at 11.3%, followed by Georgia at 10.8%, North Carolina at
7.9%, South Carolina at 6.1% and Alabama at 2.5%. Most of this growth is concentrated in two
areas:
• Major metro clusters, or MegaRegions, including the Piedmont Crescent
extending from Birmingham to Atlanta, the Carolinas extending from Charlotte to
Raleigh, and Florida metro areas of Tampa, Orlando, and Miami; and
• Coastal counties where second homes and retirement projects are being drawn to
shoreline areas.
The impacts of rapid population growth in the Southeast are magnified by increased rates of
acreage per person to accommodate new development. From 1982 to 2002, the acreage per
person for new housing almost doubled, and since 1994 new housing lots greater than 10 acres
accounted for 55% of the land development (Cohn, 2007). While development is critical to meet
legitimate human needs, such as housing, transportation and jobs, this form of low-density land
development (or sprawl) poses major barriers to creating sustainable communities. Sprawling
development patterns increasingly place restrictions on the military’s capability to expand bases
and train (Friday, 2007), and have increased burdens on communities concerning air and water
pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, energy consumption, loss of biodiversity, abandonment of
older built areas, and inequities among different population groups defined by class and race
(Berke, 2007).
Increased Presence of Military Bases
The role of the military will become more prevalent in the Southeast with the strategic
realignment of military assets under the Base Realignment and Closure Act (BRAC) as well as
other strategic and tactical actions. At the same time, the military is facing more challenges in
achieving its mission. Urban expansion around military bases and training areas has
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compromised base operations and military training. Concurrently, military doctrine and tactics
have evolved to extended distances for training and have increased the physical impact footprint
(noise, safety concerns, etc). The result is a growing competition for air, land, frequency, and
water that is much greater than ever, and will become increasingly more complex in the rapidly
urbanizing Southeast (Friday, 2007).
DoD is a major stakeholder in land management in the Southeast, with approximately 2.4 million
acres, including national assets of exceptional ecological value and biological diversity. Of 400
major DoD installations world-wide, 79 are located in the Southeast (Friday, 2007). The military
has a long played a key role in the evolution of the Southeast. A large number of military
veterans are from “military-friendly” Southeastern states, which makes the growth of military
assets in the Southeast, coupled with the significant investments in existing training ranges and
infrastructure, even more likely (Friday, 2007).
The combined impacts of growth in population and military assets will seriously strain
communities’ ability to provide adequate housing, schools, hospitals, recreational areas, fire
protection, road networks, sewage treatment, water distribution, and general quality of life assets.
It will also pose a serious challenge to maintaining compatible land and other resource uses near
military bases in corridors or as otherwise needed for training (Elliott, 2007).
Yet, with growth comes other economic development opportunities; many communities near and
around military installations will have opportunities to improve their tax base and expand public
services, and invest in long-range planning for sustainability. At issue is how best to achieve
mutually beneficial, sustainable economic development.
Loss of Forests and Farmlands
Loss of forests and farmland in the Southeast is occurring at historically high rates, especially on
the fringe of expanding metro areas. Farmland loss was 51% greater in the 1990s than in the
1980s, with the annual loss between 1992 and 1997 at 1.2 million acres (Cohn, 2007). These
losses are largely due to increasing population and home ownership, increased home lot size,
increasing land values, and decreasing agricultural income, especially due to the loss of federal
tobacco and peanut support programs (Brown, 2007). Agricultural income and lands are
declining in the Southern states at the same time that land values and development pressures are
increasing (Brown, 2007).
In the case of forestlands, the most immediate threat is the historically high land ownership
turnover rate among private forestlands (both family and industrial forests) due to weakening
markets for forest products (Wilkins, 2007). In the past, profitable and stable timber markets
contributed to maintaining forest land use, but current weak markets have created uncertainty
and a tendency to shift forestland to competing land uses. The large-scale sell-off makes
forestlands vulnerable to fragmentation in the face of rapid urbanization and development.
While the threats to open landscapes are mounting, there is a parallel increase in demand for
these lands. Southeast forestlands provide water, recreational resources, biodiversity, and other
ecosystem services for a large proportion of the nation’s present population – and will be needed
to support these services for a disproportionate amount of future population growth. Most
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farmlands and forests are considered a compatible land use by the military and their maintenance
is of particular concern. Buffers mitigate military impacts on nearby communities. Corridors
provide training routes, special use airspace lanes, or connect one military base to another
(Elliott, 2007). As these spaces are constrained by urban development and associated regulatory
restrictions, it becomes increasingly more difficult to meet training requirements. In addition to
buffer areas and corridors, efforts must be made to assess mutual benefit on lands further from
bases that are still a part of military operating areas.
Uneven Capability of State and Local Growth Management Programs
Governments play a major role in either facilitating and encouraging, or guiding and managing
growth depending on the view of the role of the public sector in development activities. Thus,
outcomes of future growth activities depend significantly on the stance of legislatures that enact
growth policies and state and local planning agencies that implement the policies.
States in the Southeast run the gamut from very progressive smart growth advocates to laissez
faire market advocates. Godschalk observes that Florida is the leading state in the Southeast for
requiring all of its local governments to prepare and adopt comprehensive growth management
plans, followed by Georgia that adopted substantial reforms, North Carolina and South Carolina
that pursued their first reforms, and Alabama with little or no reforms.
While proactive planning and policymaking are potentially effective long-term solutions, many
existing local plans and programs in the areas where new development is most concentrated in
the Southeast (urban fringe of metropolitan regions and coastal areas) are lagging and do not
encourage more sustainable development (Berke, 2007). Weak plans and ordinances in these
locations mean limited knowledge about existing human and natural resource systems, urban
development impacts on these systems, and regional-scale land use and community design
solutions to counter the impacts.
The uneven state and local capability to plan for and manage growth in the Southeast has vast
implications for the military. It indicates an inability to deal with intense development pressure
that generates incompatible land uses in buffers surrounding installations and corridors needed
for training (Berke, 2007, Elliott, 2007). Most local, regional, and state organizations do not
realize the breadth and scope of military training and operations that occur on its installations
and ranges and within other military operating areas (Friday, 2007). An installation is often not
considered as an integral part of the community or state given that its land, water, frequency and
airspace are viewed as isolated inside a federal fence line.
Moreover, the military has been perceived as not being totally open about its needs – this further
hampers state and local capability to plan for impacts of base expansions. It is not clear if the
military has done the long-term planning it really needs, or if that planning has been done but has
not been shared with the public (Friday, 2007). At issue is to bring the military and civilian
groups together to share long term growth needs and develop mutually beneficial policies.
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SUMMARY
In summary, the breakout session papers revealed that the growth management and planning
problem in the Southeast is three-fold. First, the Southeast is experiencing unparalleled
development pressures fuelled by population growth in metropolitan and coastal areas, and
greater presence of military assets. Second, loss of working landscapes and critical natural areas
in rapidly growing parts of the Southeast exacerbate existing environmental problems, add new
ones, and degrade the military’s ability to sustain lands compatible for training. Third, current
plans, institutions, and analysis tools are inadequate to manage existing growth and development
pressures. To meet these challenges, the regional planning and growth management system in
the Southeast requires significant strengthening from top to bottom.
The nation needs a sustainable Southeast that is able to successfully adapt to twenty-first century
challenges posed by growth, realignment of military assets, and loss of open spaces. States,
counties, and cities need to grow their tax base through well managed economic development to
cope with the emerging impacts of growth. Effective adaptation strategies require a far-reaching
transformation in management plans, analytical tools, and institutions.
Literature Cited
Berke, P. 2007. Built Environments. In Southeast Regional Planning & Sustainability
Workshop Report. Department of Defense.
Brown, R., 2007. Agriculture. In Southeast Regional Planning & Sustainability Workshop
Report. Department of Defense.
Cohn, G. 2007. Southeast Agriculture: Trends and Issues. In Southeast Regional Planning &
Sustainability Workshop Report. Department of Defense. http://www.serdp-
estcp.org/workshops/serps/docs/Southeast Agriculture.pdf
Elliott, M. 2007. Land Corridors. In Southeast Regional Planning & Sustainability Workshop
Report. Department of Defense.
Godschalk, D. 2007. Southeast Growth and Planning: Trends and Issues. In Southeast Regional
Planning & Sustainability Workshop Report. Department of Defense. http://www.serdp-
estcp.org/workshops/serps/docs/Southeast Growth and Planning.pdf
Friday, P. 2007. Military. In Southeast Regional Planning & Sustainability Workshop Report.
Department of Defense.
Wilkins, N. 2007. Forests. In Southeast Regional Planning & Sustainability Workshop Report.
Department of Defense.
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SYNTHESIS OF BREAKOUT SESSION PAPERS:
POLICY, RESEARCH, AND OUTREACH RECOMMENDATIONS
Philip Berke
Participants in the Breakout Groups recognized that a sustainable Southeast cannot be achieved
without a coherent and supportive regional framework to guide growth and change. On such a
landscape, human settlements are located and built through a planned process that supports
military training, compatible land uses, healthy ecosystems, and livable communities.
To achieve this vision, three broad sets of recommendations – policy, research, and outreach –
were derived from the Breakout Group chapters in Agriculture, Forests, Corridors, Military, and
Built Environments. The following discussion synthesizes the main themes for each set of
recommendations. Many of the recommendations are underway, at least in pilot form, within the
Southeast Regional Partnership for Planning and Sustainability (SERPPAS), and those efforts
need to continue to institutionalize the process and to better blend science and policy. In some
cases, significant recommendations included in the breakout papers are not covered here because
they do not fall under a particular theme. These recommendations can be found in the respective
breakout session papers.
Policy Recommendations
The Breakout Groups recommended five key polices for strengthening proactive sustainable
regional planning and management for Southeast-based military installations, and urban and
natural environments.
1. DoD should strengthen implementation of encroachment planning.
Encroachment equally impacts DoD installations and the surrounding
communities, yet the public perceives that there is little guidance that identifies
what DoD expects from the communities on how to deal with the problems. DoD
needs to clarify what installations and ranges can share with the public as it relates
to land use planning and future military operations.
2. States should establish liaison offices. Several states have established military
liaison offices which have been very effective. These state-level liaison offices
can aid the military in dealing with the myriad of regional and local resource use
planning and regulatory issues that encroach upon the military’s ability to perform
its mission. Failure to do so may result in an installation’s closure in future
BRAC efforts. The military is a major economic force in most states and this loss
can be traumatic for the local communities where an installation has closed.
3. DoD should designate organizations to work with states. DoD should have an
organizational structure to interact with state authorities on encroachment
planning issues that go beyond the limited charter of the Regional Environmental
Coordinators. The organization would be charged with bringing military and state
agencies together to share long-term growth needs and develop mutually
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beneficial plans. This action would help alleviate concerns that the military is
often not open about its intentions and actions.
4. Create university-based sustainability institutes. The institutes would bring
together interdisciplinary groups of faculty, professionals, and students in the
social sciences, natural sciences, urban planning, and environmental policy. DoD
regional commanders, base operators, scientists and outreach staff also would be
actively engaged. The institutes would conduct cutting-edge research on
sustainable community design, and disseminate that knowledge through
innovative teaching and outreach. Rather than serving as outside contractors, the
staff of the institutes would offer an in-house capability to DoD, states, and
communities to support active engagement – this would enhance the relevance of
research, the responsiveness to particular needs, and ensure that research is used
effectively.
5. Strengthen partnerships among universities, NGOs and federal agencies for
meeting high-priority research and technical assistance needs. Solutions to
issues of sustainability can be accomplished best when DoD managers engage
directly with teams of scientists from multiple disciplines. For interagency
planning and coordination, DoD has developed SERPPAS. It is recommended
that DoD develop a parallel partnership for research and technical assistance. For
the ecological and natural resource sciences, DoD could more effectively
participate in the processes of scientific discovery, translational research, and
demonstration by engaging with interdisciplinary groups of scientists through, for
example, the Cooperative Ecosystems Studies Unit (CESU) network. The CESU
network is designed to address the research and technical assistance needs of
federal agencies through a collection of 17 regional units. The Southeastern states
are represented in two adjacent CESUs – the Piedmont CESU and the Gulf Coast
CESU. These units provide a venue for federal agencies to work directly with
teams of scientists from multiple institutions and disciplines. An initial response
to this recommendation might include working with a joint group of scientists
from the Piedmont and Gulf Coast CESUs to develop a research agenda for
addressing high-priority needs. [See the Report’s Conclusion and Appendix for
an update on this effort.]
Research Recommendations
Participants of the Workshop recommended a research program be developed to support two
core activities:
• Establish “living laboratories” as regional-scale test-beds, and
• Support interdisciplinary research focus areas.
1. Establish “Living Laboratories” as Test-beds for Regional Planning. A high
priority recommendation by workshop participants is for DoD to establish “living
laboratories” for testing and developing novel approaches to planning for
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sustainable regions, and conducting outreach and engagement activities. DoD
needs to enhance its current multi-state initiatives because currently the military
lacks many convincing examples of the value of conservation corridors and
opportunities for promoting such corridors. Such laboratories can also serve as
forums for testing the establishment of state organizations and regional
partnerships that can better interface with the DoD. Participants recommended
that additional resources be applied to these efforts to supplement the Services’
programs.
As an example, DoD is exploring a more coordinated approach to planning along
the longleaf pine ecosystem between Fort Benning, Fort Rucker, and Eglin Air
Force Base to allow for proper land conservation planning. Identifying and
successfully protecting other corridors for training and conservation, and
determining how best to integrate them with sustainable economic development,
will further enhance DoD’s ability to promote regional partnerships. The
Benning-Rucker-Eglin Corridor could serve as a living laboratory in which DoD
can identify military bases and other military operation areas where compatible
use (for training or connectivity between bases) could prove beneficial. The
participants support the exploration to create “pilot living laboratories” in such
corridors. Such efforts would afford significant opportunities to protect natural
species, provide hazard mitigation, promote renewable energy resources, enhance
water resources, recreation, and public heath and enhance community economic
opportunities. An assessment, followed by a collaborative effort to develop a
joint vision for the identified region involving the various stakeholders and an
effort to apply this vision to evaluate compatible use criteria, can help delineate
boundaries and develop investment and implementation strategies. “Living
laboratory tiger teams” should also be created to implement and provide ongoing
advice and support to such projects that are underway.
2. Support Three Research Focus Areas. The research focus area is aimed at
engaging in world-class applied research on the interaction between the built and
natural environments, and how such interactions affect the sustainability of
military installations and communities. Three major focus areas are
recommended based on the research activities identified in the breakout session
papers.
Research Focus Area 1: Planning for Sustainable Regions
This focus area involves research designed to build capability for planning and implementing a
coherent and supportive regional framework to guide growth and change. Key projects include a
regional-scale audit of local planning and growth management programs as a means to facilitate
sustainability of military bases and surrounding regions, studies of institutional frameworks and
their performance in supporting military missions and economic sustainability, and the design of
decision-support tools to assess planned changes (civilian and military) on urban and
environmental systems.
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• Conduct a Regional Sustainability Audit of Plans and Development Requirements.
The audit would serve as a local/regional government assessment tool to track
how well plans and ordinances (e.g., land use regulations and incentives,
infrastructure investments) counter conventional development (or sprawl) and
advance more sustainable settlements. An assessment could identify potential
gaps, and assess the strengths and weaknesses of how well plans and ordinances
account for sustainability criteria. The tool could be applied to gauge progress in
plans over time in integrating: (1) new research findings derived from the focus
areas, and (2) improved research-based policy solutions. “Sustainability” audits
could be published annually for military bases and surrounding regions to educate
elected officials, base officials, and the public about issues and trends. For
example, an audit could be useful for establishing baseline conditions for recent
regional planning initiatives in the Sandhills and Coastal Plain of North Carolina
and Eglin AFB-Apalachicola National Forest corridor in Florida.
Sustainability criteria used by the audit will be based on the emerging field of
sustainability sciences (e.g., National Research Council publications, U.S. EPA
Smart Growth reports) and best practices. Although every plan brings together a
series of choices designed to fit a particular community, the criteria should be
robust enough to determine the strength of any plan and its implementation
ordinances in supporting sustainable settlement patterns. The intent is to help
policymakers and stakeholders to think systematically about how facts, goals, and
policies should be developed and integrated into regional planning programs.
• Develop an Institutional Performance Assessment Model. Metropolitan regions in
the Southeast are emerging as dominant economic units in a globalizing society.
The sprawling development patterns in these regions have considerable effects on
forest and farmland preservation, watershed management, traffic congestion, and
military training. The multiple networks of institutions that govern these regions
make decisions that exert significant impacts on regional institutional
performance. While some important scientific and technical work is being done
to address these issues, much institutional change will be needed to tie this
knowledge to advance regional plans and partnerships to resolve these issues.
The proposed research will develop an Institutional Performance Assessment
Model (IPAM) to assess the influence of regional partnership building strategies
(data sharing, visioning, formulating plans/policies, setting priorities for action,
funding) and organization reform strategies (consolidation of municipal and
county governments, potential privatization of infrastructure facilities and
services) on the ability of metro governance institutions to support multi-state
compatible use areas, sustainable urban settlements, and infrastructure services
that are consistent with corridors and settlement patterns. The research will entail
development of metrics to gauge the strength of institutional partnerships across
regions and performance outcomes to be integrated into the performance
assessment model. IPAM will help regional (and local) governing institutions to
measure, compare, and improve institutional designs that most effectively build
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regional-scale partnerships. Such a method could of particular value to
SERPPAS.
• Develop an Urban and Environmental Impact Assessment Model. This project
seeks to build on DoD’s Sustainable Communities Toolbox (see
http://www.wg.srs.com/sustainablecommunitiestoolbox/) and recent technological
advances to improve decision support tools that will enhance the understanding of
urban and environmental system performance and the impacts of planned change
(civilian and military) on performance. Current land use-oriented tools are
specialized for simulation and scenario construction (e.g., What-If?, INDEX,
California Urban and Biodiversity Analysis), computer aided visualization
(CommunityViz), and real-time mapping (Google Earth). Through a series of
interviews and case studies with software developers and end users, researchers
can systematically identify and evaluate these new and emerging tools, develop a
comprehensive list of ideal functions, and compare these ideal functions in a gap
analysis against what exists to refine the final product. Ultimately, this model
could ideally be as easy for the layperson to use as the current Google Maps
standard. It will allow anyone with access to the Internet to query a wide range of
socioeconomic, forest, farmland, climate change, and land use and infrastructure
datasets, model the distribution of future growth scenarios from civilian and
military perspectives, and assess impacts of alternative scenarios based on a range
of social, economic, and environmental sustainability indicators. The model will
be tested in multiple communities.
Research Focus Area 2: Conservation Ecology
This focus area emphasizes improving the understanding of natural system dynamics, and
exploring means of integrating ecosystem service values to develop markets for these services.
Emphasis would be on quantifying eco-service values important to military bases, and individual
landowners and communities. Research would also entail development of monitoring protocols
for measuring ecosystem services from landscapes, and improve methods for assessing the
cumulative effects of multiple disturbances on ecosystems.
• Develop Metrics and Monitoring Protocols for Measuring Ecosystem Services.
Being able to maintain an accurate periodic accounting of important ecosystem
services can serve as a more relevant tracking of some elements of ecosystem
sustainability (e.g., watershed performance, endangered species habitat
effectiveness, carbon sequestration, etc). DoD should lead science-based efforts
to develop the “currency” for markets in ecosystem services. If real markets for
environmental credits, habitat credits, and other crediting systems are to develop,
then there must be a means for aggregating, brokering, banking and tracking
uniform units. By ignoring eco-service values, the marketplace does not price the
services – allowing, say, destruction of wetlands that masks environmental costs
and increased investments in public facilities (e.g. wastewater treatment or flood
mitigation) needed to recover the values. Without improvements in accounting
tools, the conversion of forests to urban development is done more cheaply by not
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accounting for the ultimate public cost through higher taxes and degradation of
the military’s ability to train.
• Assess Cumulative Effects of Multiple Disturbances on Ecosystems. Advances in
GIS, remote sensing, analytical tools, and modeling provide conservation
ecologists an opportunity to develop novel approaches for assessing the
vulnerability of ecosystems to multiple disturbances. A promising area for
advancement is in the development of spatially-explicit models that give scientists
a framework for exploring landscape-scale questions such as: How are various
combinations of large scale disturbances likely to influence ecosystem
vulnerability to invasive species, pathogens, or pests? When combined with the
effects of climate change, how are changing land uses, fragmentation, and land
management constraints likely to influence ecosystem sustainability?
Research Focus Area 3: Human Behavior and Economic Sustainability
This focus area examines the impacts of public land use plans and policies on land market
behavior, and gauges patterns of support and opposition for alternative land use options among
stakeholders. Studies will seek solutions on how to create new and cost-efficient ways for
landowners to capitalize on the various public values (e.g., values for ecosystem services and
military training) of private lands to reduce the vulnerability of corridors, buffers, and other
military operating areas, and support the economic vitality and livability of communities.
• Evaluate Impacts of Growth Management Tools on Land Markets. DoD needs to
better understand land market forces, and how tools used by a government growth
management program influence the behavior of market interests (households,
businesses, developers, governments) in terms of the location, type, amount,
intensity, density, and design of development. The tools that affect land use
decisions include, for example, zoning regulations, land acquisition programs,
taxes, fees, incentives, compensatory regulations (conservation banks, credit
trading), infrastructure investments, and incentives (conservation easements,
density bonuses). The aim is to seek options that are best for the military bases to
use, the impact the use of each or multiple options might have on local land
values and local property tax income, and how to minimize DoD costs. The pilot
conservation credit program at Fort Hood is a successful example of providing
benefits to both landowners and the military while keeping the costs to DoD
relatively low.
• Stakeholder Surveys. DoD needs to better understand all of the interests and
attitudes of potential stakeholders involved in encroachment issues. No one likes
decisions being made about their land, their financial future, or their lives without
a say. Studies need to be conducted wherever the military needs compatible land
use or plans expansion or increased on-base activity without interviewing the
surrounding landowners. Cultures differ based on personal experiences, age, race,
locale and a number of other factors. Such interviews of local attitudes and
interests in incentive programs need to be done locally and in person. The creation
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of a pilot project in eastern North Carolina could potentially assess the potential
for application of incentive programs with private landowners near multiple
Marine Corps facilities. Similar research should also focus on the attitudes of the
military towards openness with the civilian population.
• Social Marketing Research. This project would involve supporting a social
marketing research initiative focused on changing attitudes and behaviors about
the mutually beneficial links between military compatibility, conservation of open
spaces, and compact urban development patterns. It would draw on knowledge
and techniques developed in the social marketing field. This field has evolved
from a one-dimensional reliance on public service announcements to a more
sophisticated approach which draws on theories of communication and methods
of survey research. Rather than dictating the way that information is to be
conveyed from the top-down, researchers would be actively involved in guiding
military and public agency professionals on how to listen to target audiences, and
building the program from there. This focus on the “consumer” would involve in-
depth research and constant re-evaluation of every aspect of the research program.
• Assess Impacts of State and Federal Laws. A study into how the DoD can benefit
from future Farm Bill legislation and other federal acts (i.e., the Coastal Zone
Management Act) would be useful. Once the military realizes the impact of such
legislation on their activities, they would be more interested in providing input on
the drafting of such legislation. In addition, Farm Bill and other types of
legislation could include ways in which the DoD can add to the value and impact
of that legislation on landowners.
Outreach and Engagement Recommendations
The outreach and engagement program focuses on training and capacity-building activities
aimed at transferring knowledge generated through interdisciplinary focus area research into
materials that are used to train practitioners, including, but not limited to local and regional
planners, federal, state and local government officials and their staff, business owners,
professional associations, elected officials, non-profit organizations, community groups and
individuals. Following are recommendations of the types of projects that would be supported
under this program.
1. Establish sustainability planning teams to build capability. The Marine Corps has
a very successful program of community liaison offices at each installation. All
installations should establish sustainable community teams, whose mission is to
build capacity and community to plan at regional and local levels. A key of this
initiative would be to cultivate local leaders to become sustainability advocates
through workshops and information exchange. These teams are made up of
skilled and experienced spatial data (GIS) analysts, urban and conservation
planners, and facilitators. To assist in this task DoD should establish
sustainability planning institutes at universities in the Southeast – see policy
recommendations above.
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2. Build on and develop communication, public engagement, and leadership
building strategies. Improved sharing of information will enhance the military’s
ability to protect its missions – while supporting sustainable economic
development. Most encroachment issues are externally driven and therefore, most
solutions lie with the external encroachment source. Data, information, and
knowledge must be shared with all through multiple means to include information
sharing, cooperating, coordinating, and in many cases, collaborating. Tools are
needed for planners and military base operators to communicate the value of
resources protection plans for urban developments that advance sustainability and
compatibility with military missions, and for scientists to communicate the
knowledge that will enable operators, planners, elected officials, and local leaders
in business and non-profits organizations (e.g., land conservancies, neighborhood
associations) to carry out effective sustainable community and regional design
initiatives.
3. Publish best practice manuals. DoD has begun to publish manuals describing best
sustainable practices for built and natural environments describing successes,
identifying best urban design, communication, and engagement principles, and
recommending practical techniques. This practice should be expanded and aimed
at state, regional, and local levels to help them reorient their practice to achieve
sustainable communities in the context of sustaining military training lands. They
should also address lessons learned to aid new commanders in taking over
positions that involve significant levels of community involvement. Development
of the manuals would be derived from examples from past and ongoing
collaborative work by the military and communities, and innovative smart growth
initiatives that compliment efforts to build the sustainability of military
installations and human communities.
4. University Course/Degree Development. The USDA Cooperative State Research
Education and Extension Service (CSREES) sponsors an Education Challenge
Grant program to assist universities in developing new academic programs. DoD
funds might be used to match these to develop needed distance education courses,
continuing education certificates, or even degrees to address the many issues the
Workshop participants have raised, such as in urban planning, agricultural policy,
DoD planning, collaborative problem solving, and environmental regulations.
5. Education and public outreach programs. DoD needs to continue to emphasize
establishment of internal and external training programs for conducting effective
outreach and engagement activities as well as forums for engaging in real life
encroachment problem solving until such time the training can be incorporated
into Service schools and activities. Many of the land use planning, farmland and
forest conservation, and encroachment management practices necessary are
commonly misunderstood by the general public. Outreach and education
programs developed in collaboration with non-governmental organizations
(NGOs) and university extension programs can create a forum for increasing
public acceptance.
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AGRICULTURE
Robert D. Brown
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The pre-workshop background paper, “Southeast Agriculture: Trends and Issues,” by Gerry
Cohn, provided the background for this discussion group. In short, agricultural income and lands
are declining in the Southeastern states at the same time that land values and development
pressures are increasing. Most agriculture is considered a compatible land use by the military,
and vice versa. Thus the discussion group focused on the issues impacting the future of
agricultural land use around military bases and solutions to some of those issues which could be
addressed by further research, resource leveraging, and partnerships among universities, non-
profits, and local, state and federal governments.
The military represents an aspect of the government, which has had a mixture of positive and
negative relationships with the agricultural community. Often foremost in the minds of farmers
and ranchers is the concern over their private property rights. Landowners do not like to be told
what to do with their land, as that land, though perhaps declining in income, is increasing in
value, and may be the key to that family’s financial aspirations. Agricultural land can be valued
for its potential for housing and associated services development, productivity in providing food
for the military bases and the nation, as aesthetically-pleasing green space, and/or for the
ecosystem services it provides, such as that of a watershed, for carbon sequestration, or as
wildlife habitat. Incorporating these values into the economic value of the land is a challenge, as
are incorporating externalities, such as cultural attitudes about agriculture as a lifestyle, decisions
made by the World Trade Organization (WTO), or attitudes of landowners and corporations
about short-term versus long-term economics. There are already a multitude of incentives for
agricultural land use through commodity price supports, conservation set asides, and even
buyouts, but they may be inadequate to serve the military’s needs for buffers. To that end, the
military has not always been open to the public with its long-term needs for training land and
space to accommodate new weaponry or tactics.
Universities can address many of these issues through research, outreach efforts and academic
programs. Databases are needed to inventory and catalogue existing incentive programs
regionally and even locally and to develop a broker system so that one office makes such
information available to both the military and the civilian landowners. Land transaction
information, such as regional development plans and existing easements, if made accessible to
the public, would provide fairness to land buyers and sellers. Research is needed to assess the
impact of potential incentives on land values and local tax roles, to evaluate the attitudes of
landowners about these options, to assess the attitudes of the military about being open with
civilians, and to formalize military-civilian communications. Modeling research is needed to
develop better land value assessment approaches for the military and to evaluate the potential
economic, social and environmental impacts of their land use decisions. This would also help
find gaps in the corporate knowledge and develop performance indicators. Studies into what the
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military has to gain from Farm Bill policies could lead to a greater interest by the DoD in non-
military legislation. Modeling of long-term DoD requirements in weapons and tactics
development, and their concomitant training area needs could lead to an estimation of social,
economic and environmental footprints on states and communities, to help eliminate conflicts
and overlaps. An investigation into the statutory authority of the military to enforce existing
water rights, easements and other land use agreements is warranted, as is research into how to
eliminate cross-state barriers to land use planning. Finally, universities can develop distance
education courses, certificates and degrees for military and community planning personnel in
needed areas, such as urban planning, agricultural policies, collaborative problem solving, and
environmental regulations.
INTRODUCTION
The breakout sessions were guided by the background paper, “Southeast Agriculture: Trends and
Issues” (Cohn, 2007) of the American Farmland Trust. In that review, it was revealed that the
Southeastern states are losing farmland at a rapid rate, largely due to increasing population and
home ownership, increased home lot size, increasing land values, and decreasing agricultural
income, especially due to the loss of federal tobacco and peanut support programs. Other issues
of concern raised in this report include the division of inherited agricultural lands amongst
African American families by heir property, which divides ownership shares evenly amongst all
heirs, thus fragmenting the land; the aging of the farm population; and continuing environmental
concerns of crop and livestock operations. Solutions to these problems, suggested in this
chapter, include new enterprises such as agri-tourism and ethanol production, farm transition
assistance, farmland protection and land trusts, state tax credits and deductions, and suggestions
for new policy provisions in the 2007 Farm Bill.
Definitions and Assumptions
The group agreed on a definition of agriculture as the “Production of biological commodities and
processes for which there is a market.” Upon reflection, however, the group also acknowledged
that silviculture, commercial near-shore ocean fisheries, and even ecosystem services, such as
water, carbon or endangered species credits could also be termed, “agriculture.” Thus some
distinctions between land uses could be artificial, and the issues and solutions could well overlap
with those of other discussion groups. Finally, the group agreed on the definition of an effective
buffer as “A defined condition of use of land that cannot be changed without military
concurrence.” The point here, for example, is that a zoning restriction might provide a
temporary advantage to a military base, but since the restriction could be changed at any time by
the local government, it would not really be a more permanent “buffer” to the military base.
The group reviewed the guidance given as metrics for analysis for this workshop. That is, the
evaluation of the issues and solutions should be in the context of research, policy, local/regional
coordination and information sharing; the issues of scale should include individual, local
communities, state/federal, and inter-jurisdictional; and finally the testing of all solutions should
be against the “triple bottom line (TBL)” of social, economic and environmental impacts. The
group decided that this matrix was complex, as many problems tend to be, and could most
appropriately be graphically represented as a 3-dimensional cube. Thus, in the deliberations, the
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group agreed to refer to these guidelines, but not to attempt to “fill in the boxes” of the cube as
they reviewed issues in a more general sense.
The group made the assumption that most agricultural land use is compatible with military
interests. Exceptions might be instances where rangeland or forests might have to be burned
periodically as a management tool, thus causing smoke to obscure aircraft runways. But even
these potential conflicts could be overcome with proper planning and communication. Likewise,
the group felt that most military operations were relatively benign to farming and livestock
operations. Again, there might be anomalies, such as noise from a nearby military base
disrupting poultry or dairy operations, or flight pattern restrictions impacting the use of aerial
applicators for aerial chemical (pesticide and fertilizer) applications on farms and forests.
Nonetheless, the overall concept to which the group agreed is that agricultural land use and
military operations are largely compatible.
AGRICULTURAL ISSUES
Private Property Rights. The group first recognized the plethora of rights of private property
owners. The passion of landowners and landowner groups for these rights vary by locale, but
generally governments face criticism when they take land from unwilling landowners via
eminent domain, regardless of the intended use, such as for highways, water reservoirs, or
military bases, and regardless of the compensation offered the landowner. Likewise, many
landowners have a general lack of trust in their county, state and federal governments, and even
in other non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and as a result they distrust permanent
easements. Landowners prefer to be able to make decisions about the use of their lands and their
own financial futures. An example was given of Beaufort County, South Carolina, where it was
said that the southern portion of the county has been fragmented by home development, with the
previous largely Caucasian agricultural landowners reaping substantial financial benefits. Land
trusts are apparently now recommending easements on the agricultural land in the northern
portion of the county, which is largely owned by African Americans. The latter landowners
point out that they too would like to be able to sell their land for development and reap enormous
financial rewards for their families, as the Caucasians in the southern portion of the county have
done. Thus it would seem that short-term financial incentives would be a more appropriate
answer as a means of preserving agricultural lands as buffers for military installations with
rapidly rising land prices.
Incentives. Agriculture is a highly complex industry in America, and there are a multitude of
overlapping, if not occasionally conflicting, incentives for use of land for farming, forestry and
raising livestock. Much of agriculture is driven by commodity markets, but even those are
complex and conflicting. For instance, the potential of using corn for ethanol and soybeans for
bio-diesel has led to tremendously increased production of these crops. But those crops require
fertilizer, herbicides and other pesticides, as well as water. The conversion of these crops into
fuels has already begun to impact the price of livestock feed, which could eventually impact food
prices. There is concern too that the demand for more land to produce these crops could provide
the incentive for farmers to take land out of the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) and put
marginal land back into production, with negative environmental results.
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In addition to the impact of the markets themselves, agriculture has a multitude of commodity
price supports from the federal government and special tax treatments from local governments.
These change every five years or so when a new federal Farm Bill is approved. Likewise, local
governments in rural areas survive with minimal property taxes, which could be reduced even
further if agricultural land is put under easements held by governments or NGOs. Such
easements reduce land value and thus tax losses to the county. The general consensus of the
group was that: (1) it is difficult to define a “working agricultural landscape” in the sense of
longevity or perpetuity, (2) although American Farmland Trust and Soil and Water Conservation
Districts list most agricultural incentive programs, there is no “single source” directory of the
many incentives that exist, including military and NGO incentives, and (3) it is difficult to judge
whether existing incentives are effective in terms of buffering military bases.
Water Quality/Quantity. Most of the group felt the future of the nation’s development in
nearly all aspects would rest on the issues of energy and water quality/quantity. Agricultural
lands may offer watersheds, which are valuable to communities, the military bases, and the
agricultural operations themselves. True, agriculture is often a major water consumer, and it can
be a major source of non-point source pollution, which can have negative impacts on the very
entities that are enhanced by water availability. Water regulations vary dramatically state by
state in a complex milieu. Clearly, water is easy to regulate during periods of plenty, but
challenging to regulate during periods of scarcity. Shortages of water will limit urban
development, but also expansion, if not current use, of military bases, as well as types of
agricultural land use. The group felt the need to consider water quantity, point-source, non-point
source and total maximum daily loads (TMDL) of sediments in all water policies. Compatibility
of water regulations across state boundaries would be useful as well.
Growth. Growth means development for housing and associated services, and can be defined in
many ways, such as urban growth, suburban growth, or ex-urban growth. An example was given
of a 40-acre farm near Raleigh, North Carolina, selling recently for over $100,000 per acre.
Agricultural landowners, whose children may not be interested in farming, consider their land to
be their savings account for putting their children through college and/or for their own
retirement. Thus land owners feel threatened by groups or suggested regulations that may inhibit
them from profiting from their investment in their land. Studies in Texas have shown that there
is literally no land in that very large state that does not have a greater current value for
development than it does for agricultural use. This is a challenge for incentive programs, as land
values continue to increase. Interestingly, land preserved from development by fee purchase or
permanent easements may drive up the value of surrounding lands for development.
Politicians at all levels often are elected by promises of more jobs and economic prosperity.
Agriculture seldom fits into that equation, and thus there are relatively few examples of proactive
policies, political will, or leadership for the long-term good of society for protecting agricultural
lands from development. An example was given, however, of an area of Colorado, wherein a ski
resort added a tax to its lift tickets to provide a match to state funds to purchase the development
rights of surrounding ranches. The ranches gained the money they would have made from
selling their lands, while they were able to continue ranching; the ski resort was able to continue
to attract skiers to a pristine area, unsullied by excessive development.
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Food. It would seem obvious that a nation growing in population would need to protect its food
supply. Nonetheless, much of America’s food now comes from other countries, especially those
crops which are labor intensive. It is also true that much agriculture in this country is produced
on very small farms and ranches, most with agricultural incomes of less than $10,000 per year.
Thus, American agriculture is bimodal – with huge wheat/corn operations, dairies, and hog farms
in some areas, and thousands of “hobby farms” in others. Agriculture then is often thought of as
a tradition, or a lifestyle, rather than as a business. As such, agriculture has become a political
commodity, controlled by subsidies and price supports. Military bases too use food, and
although access to locally-grown foods may be valued, none of the participants were aware of a
base that specifically bought locally-grown foods to serve on the base. It is commonly felt that
the American public, as well as the military, are out of touch with American agriculture, with
few understanding not only where their food comes from, but how local and national policies
impact food availability, safety and prices. Moreover, in the group it was mentioned that the
eventual outcome of the current round of WTO talks could impact farm subsidies, food
production, and agricultural land values in this country. Those decisions could be years in
coming, if ever, but the implications loom large.
Economics. The economics of land use are complex. As mentioned above, agricultural
economics cannot be defined by market forces alone. Markets eventually provide balance, but
do not take into account externalities. Externalities can include a family’s values concerning
their land, health costs or other potential changes in a family’s need for income, international
agreements, and even wars. Moreover, markets do not include the human element, such as the
strength of the desire of landowners to stay in farming, or the needs of landowners to use their
land as a financial savings instrument. New markets, such as for new products, agri-tourism,
ethanol, or the creation of carbon, endangered species, or watershed credits, can add to the mix
of economic decisions. Unfortunately, many corporate and even individual economic decisions
are short-term. Long-term economic decisions, the kind that would be favorable to the use of
agricultural lands as military buffers, require new thinking and new policies.
Systems Thinking. As mentioned during the discussion, the military and the public in general
are out of touch with agriculture. Likewise, agricultural leadership is often out of touch with the
military. Americans value privately-owned land, and the rights of landowners to decide what to
do with their land. Those decisions, however, have huge impacts on systems around that land.
Land is needed for housing, but also food production, aesthetics, watersheds, wildlife habitat,
military buffers and other uses. Policies of the military impact surrounding lands, as do
agricultural policies impact military bases. BRAC has closed many bases, in some cases
disrupting local economies and in others offering opportunities to use that land for development
(i.e., the Austin, TX airport). The military, however, still needs lands to train, and units from the
closed bases are being moved to existing bases, thus causing the need for expansion and
increased use of those bases.
Land Value. Nearly all land increases in value with time (the exceptions being land which
becomes polluted, or less desirable for housing due to nearby factories, or land that floods, such
as the New Orleans area). Examples have been given above as to the growing impact of the need
for land for housing and associated services. Not all land is available (some is in parks or
national forests), not all land is arable, and not all land is desirable for development. Thus, the
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land that is left increases in value as more and more land is taken off the market by development,
or by restrictions, such as easements. It is a truism that agricultural land, once converted to
urban use, cannot be converted back to agriculture. That is, it is not “retrievable.”
The public has means of valuing land and increasing the financial returns from land, to include
easements, new agricultural products and markets, tax and subsidy incentives, ecosystem
services credits, and even development. Unfortunately, the military and the public seem to have
no means of integrating these values, and especially integrating them in terms of value to
military bases, and value to the human element – the desires and goals of the individual
landowners.
Tax Programs. Land provides the tax base for the schools, fire and police departments, and a
multitude of other services. The consideration of tax policies take into account fairness to the
landowner – that is, what is the value and income to the land, and also the needs of the
community – the payment for services rendered? Land is limited – we Americans are not
making any more of it. Agricultural land is taxed a low rate as an incentive to provide for food
production, and also because the costs of services in rural areas is low. But in fact, the land may
now be of much higher value – possibly for new products, for easements, or for development,
but taxes are not generally adjusted based on the potential of the land. Increased property taxes
to account for the “real” value of the land could be an inducement for land owners to allow
easements to protect their land in perpetuity, but such tax increases could also induce landowners
to sell to developers. Simultaneously, the military needs to assess the value of the land to the
non-landowning tax payers. Are they getting appropriate taxes from that land? Should they
consider the value of that land as a watershed or as “green space” when assessing taxes to that
land? The military and the public seem to be in need of a method of taking all of these issues
into account when developing tax policies. Those tools are not presently available.
The Role of Universities. There is a saying that “society has problems, but universities have
departments.” That is, due to their structure and their “publish or perish – preferably on federal
grants” mentality, universities are often slow to make progress on solving society’s problems.
Short-term, applied research is often not valued, outreach programs in many disciplines are often
non-existent, and interdisciplinary research, especially across multi-university boundaries is
difficult. Nonetheless, more and more interdisciplinary centers and institutes are being formed.
Land grant universities have the traditional role of supporting the agricultural and natural
resources communities through research, academic programs, and outreach or extension efforts.
But few land grant universities have law schools or medical schools, and most public and private
universities have programs addressing sociology, history, economics, and political science. All
of these disciplines are needed in solving the complex problems faced today. The Agricultural
Extension Service provides a unique access to the agricultural landowner, and that access could
be made more available to all university endeavors, and to deliver the results of university
problem solving.
Military Needs. Finally, in the discussion of issues, the group believes that the military has not
been totally open about its requirements. It is not clear if the military has done the long-term
planning it really needs, or if that planning has been done but has not been shared with the
public. There is an often-perceived lack of openness with the public on the part of the military.
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This may stem from the differing military and civilian cultures, concerns over real or perceived
legal and national defense issues, and past public outcry over military land use decisions. There
needs to be a way of bringing the military and civilian groups together to share long term growth
needs together so that policies will be developed that are mutually beneficial.
The missions of the military services differ, and thus to the understanding they have divergent
interests in buffers. The Army and the Marine Corps use their bases to train troops for offensive
and defensive land-based missions. On some bases they train mostly infantry, paratroops, or
special operations forces. This requires large areas of differing terrain, and may involve
helicopters and other low flying aircraft. The impact of these exercises on the land within and
outside of the military base may be light relative to other types of training. On other bases they
maneuver tanks, mechanized infantry and artillery. This requires much more land, causes loud
noise, and is highly damaging to the land base. The Navy, on the other hand, does most of its
training at sea. Its bases house personnel and sometimes have landing fields to train pilots, but
the major impact on their land and surrounding land is noise. The Air Force has less impact yet,
as most, but not all, of their training bases are in remote areas, and their principle environmental
issues is also noise.
Recurring Issue Themes. Once these issues were discussed by the discussion group, they
defined six recurring themes: 1. Are the incentives for maintaining land in agricultural use
meeting the military’s needs for buffers and other land uses? 2. Is there an alignment among
agricultural, conservation, and military land use policies? 3. Is compatible land use reflecting
mutual benefits? 4. How can the military effectively cut across county, state, jurisdictional,
institutional, service and agency boundaries? 5. How can the military enhance its interest in the
non-military (i.e., agricultural, transportation, growth) policies and agricultural interests in non-
ag policies (i.e., global warming, BRAC)? 6. How does the military change cultural attitudes to
appreciate the triple bottom line – social, economic, environmental (i.e., what is the “highest and
best use” of land)?
SOLUTIONS/RECOMMENDATIONS/OPTIONS
After outlining the major recurring themes, the discussion group devised potential solutions for
each main issue, keeping in mind the triple bottom line. The focus of the discussion was the role
of academics in promoting successful collaboration between the military and agriculture. They
found that universities could provide intellectual expertise, research, technological resources,
interdisciplinary dialogue, facilitation of inter-agency dialogue, and public outreach.
Policy
Research of DoD Interests in Non-Military Federal Legislation. A study into how the DoD can
benefit from future Farm Bill legislation and other federal acts (i.e., the Coastal Zone
Management Act) would be useful. Once the military realizes the impact of such legislation on
their activities, they would be more interested in providing input on the drafting of such
legislations. In addition, Farm Bill legislation could include ways in which the DoD can add to
the value and impact of that legislation on landowners.
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Local/Regional Coordination
Study of Interstate Constraints on Collaboration. Research needs to be conducted on existing
barriers to interstate collaboration within the SERPPAS states so that interstate or multi-state
compacts could be developed for such things as endangered species, conservation credits, and
other issues. Such agreements already are in place for multi-state disaster responses, so that
National Guard units from one state can be used in another state.
Information Sharing
1. Inventory of Support Programs. There are clearly a multitude of incentives for
landowners to remain in agriculture. The group feels there is a need for an
inventory of these programs across the USDA, the Department of Interior, DoD,
the Department of Commerce, state and county programs, and of NGOs, such as
the American Farmland Trust, The Nature Conservancy, and local land trusts.
Such a database could then provide a menu for landowners, community planners,
military planners, and others to access the potential of existing programs,
especially if layered on top of each other, to provide incentives for landowners.
2. Development of Open-Access Databases. A need exists for localized databases,
which include information on community growth plans, military expansion plans,
policy considerations, local easements and restrictions, ecosystem service
agreements, and estimation of land values from all perspectives available in order
to have fair land transactions. Land speculation is a vibrant industry in this
country. Although traditional agricultural income is declining, opportunities for
new income from ecosystem services, land development, and other uses are
increasing, as is the potential for chicanery. The solution to this dilemma is for all
people to have total access to all information available.
3. Development of Institutionalized Communications. Although some bases have
specifically identified community relations personnel, not all do, and few have
personnel versed in relations peculiar to rural or agricultural landowners. States
have Civilian Aides to the Secretary of the Army. State-level and base-level
liaison personnel are needed to attend to the issues of land use around the bases.
4. Development of a Broker System. Once these incentives are recognized and
catalogued, the military needs an economic study to develop a “broker system” or
“1-stop-shopping” system to match the incentives available to the eligibility of the
landowners. The Farm Services Agency (FSA) now provides that service, but
only for USDA agricultural policies.
5. University Course/Degree Development. The USDA Cooperative State Research
Education and Extension Service (CSREES) has an Education Challenge Grant
program to assist universities in developing new academic programs. DoD funds
might be used to match these to develop needed distance education courses,
continuing education certificates, or even degrees to address the many issues the
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group has raised, such as in urban planning, agricultural policy, DoD planning,
collaborative problem solving, and environmental regulations.
ACTION OPPORTUNITIES
Research
1. Research Into DoD Options. As research is conducted on options and incentives
for landowners, concurrent research needs to be done on which options are
available and are best for the military bases to use, what impact the use of each or
multiple options might have on local land values and local tax income, and how to
minimize DoD costs. The military must remember that agricultural land use
issues are complex, and that one policy or incentive may have both positive and
negative impacts on others, as well as on the culture of the surrounding populace.
Maximizing the impact of DoD expenditures in this arena is also imperative. The
pilot conservation credit program at Fort Hood was given as an example of
providing benefits to both landowners and the military while keeping the costs to
DoD relatively low. Similarly, the military is in fact a landowner, and often
existing agreements over water rights or easements are often lost or forgotten.
Knowledge of and the ability to enforce such options should be included in this
mix.
2. Landowner Surveys. No one likes decisions being made about their land, their
financial future, or their lives without a say. Studies need to be conducted
wherever the military needs buffers or plans expansion or increased on-base
activity without interviewing the surrounding landowners. Cultures differ based
on personal experiences, age, race, locale and a number of other factors. Such
interviews of local attitudes and interests in incentive programs need to be done
locally and they need to be done in person.
3. Modeling TBL. The “total bottom line” (TBL) of social, economic and
environmental impact of policies needs to be modeled first to educate
stakeholders to find gaps in the knowledge, to test the “ripple effects” of one
policy on another, and to define performance indicators to test when policies are
successful. Such modeling is not easy or simple but is necessary to insure
lawmakers [?] are not making economic policies at the expense of social values or
environmental concerns, nor allowing one of the latter considerations to dominate
others.
4. WTO Impact Modeling. The Doha round of WTO talks could change U.S.
agricultural policy dramatically and could thus have an impact on the military. A
study of the potential impact of such changes would be of value.
5. Long-Term DoD Development Research. Over time, new weapons emerge and
new strategies are developed. Rarely are training requirements developed at the
same time. Research needs to be done on the 10 to 50 year plans for new
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weaponry and tactics and the concomitant training area needs. Those needs must
to be assessed through the complete life cycles of those weapons and tactics
(including BRAC) to estimate their impact on TBL within states. Conflicts and
overlaps could then be determined and solutions could be developed.
6. Study of Military Attitudes. Research needs to be done on the attitudes of the
military towards openness with the civilian population. This could be attended by
case studies of successes and failures of military-civilian transactions over land
use issues, and “how-to” manuals could be developed.
Demonstration/Validation
Development of Alternative Military Appraisal Methods. Research should to be done as to how
the military evaluates and appraises land. For instance, if a new firing range is developed on a
base at a cost of $25 million and becomes restricted in its use because of off-base surrounding
land assessed at $10 million, what is the real value of that off-base land to the military?
Currently, DoD would be limited to paying 125% of the assessed value of that land, yet a $25
million investment on base could be at stake. The statutory authority of the military needs to be
investigated to determine if policy changes are needed within DoD.
Literature Cited
Cohn, G. 2007. Southeast Agriculture: Trends and Issues. In Southeast Regional Planning &
Sustainability Workshop Report. Department of Defense. [http://www.serdp-
estcp.org/workshops/serps/docs/Southeast_Agriculture_Trends_And_Issues.pdf]
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FORESTS
Neal Wilkins
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
In the Southeast forest sustainability is increasingly important for maintaining prosperity in the
region. Sustaining the eco-values, functions, and benefits of the forestlands is also a key to
sustaining the training capacity and resources for military installations. At 214 million acres,
forestlands in the South account for the largest single land use. With over 86% of the region’s
forestlands in private ownership, the prospects for sustainability lie in the management and
ownership decisions of individual landowners, foresters, investors, and land managers. The
region is facing some large-scale shifts in land ownership demographics, weakening timber
markets, and strong resource pressures from an increasing population. For many landowners, the
economic incentives for maintaining large, intact, productive forestlands are weakening. As a
consequence, forest sustainability is threatened by urbanization and development. While these
and other threats to sustainability are mounting, the demand for ecosystem services provided by
forestlands is also growing.
In this report, The Breakout Group summarizes several issues and recommendations for
maintaining forest sustainability in the South – specifically focusing on the positions that DoD
could take while engaging with scientists from universities and other research institutions. An
overriding issue identified is the threat to sustainability due to land use conversion and loss of
forestlands. The need is recognized to focus on forest ecosystem services and developing
markets for those services as a means for counteracting some of the primary threats. The Group
acknowledged the need to better understand the cumulative effects of multiple disturbances on
forestlands. Finally, they recognized that the demands on water quality and availability are
likely to have an overriding influence on forests, forest management, and the sustainability of
forests in the Southeast.
The recommendations include: (1) Strengthen partnerships among DoD and universities, NGOs
and federal agencies for meeting high-priority research and technical assistance needs;
(2) Support delivery of education and public outreach programs; (3) Establish a program for
developing new incentive structures and other policy innovations for the conservation and
stewardship of private forestlands; (4) Move proposed and existing habitat crediting programs
forward for demonstration; (5) Develop assessment standards, metrics, and monitoring protocols
for measuring ecosystem services related to forestlands; (6) Improve methods for assessing the
cumulative effects of multiple disturbances on forest ecosystems; and (7) Develop tools for
projecting watershed performance and regional water availability under scenarios of biomass-
for-energy demand, shifting timber markets, population growth, and climate change.
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INTRODUCTION
Defining sustainability has been compared to defining “justice” or “democracy” – the definitions
are elusive, but the concept is nevertheless important (Floyd 2002). One common definition for
“sustainable forestry” (from the Dictionary of Forestry) is the “practice of meeting the forest
resource needs and values of the present without compromising the similar capability of future
generations.” With the forestlands of the Southeast facing several threats, it might be said that
the sustainability of the forest resource is being challenged. This report summarizes some issues
regarding forest sustainability in the Southeast that emerged from the Forest Breakout Group –
also included are the recommendations for DoD engagement with university scientists on the
topic. It should be noted that there are no official statistics for the “Southeastern forestlands.”
Therefore much of the information for the region of interest had to be taken from those statistics
for the Southern forests which include states from Texas to North Carolina, principally the
longleaf and loblolly pine forests.
Of the estimated 620 million acres of forestland in the US, over 34% are in the 13 Southern
states (Smith et al 2004). More than 60% of the nation’s timber harvests draw from these
Southern forestlands (Wear 2007). As a subset of the Southern forestlands, the Southeast’s
forestlands provide water, recreational resources, and other ecosystem services for a large
proportion of the nation’s present population – and will be needed to support these services for a
disproportionate amount of future population growth. In addition, Southeastern forestlands
support important wildlife resources and biological diversity.
In the South, forestlands account for 214 million acres, over 86% of which is in private
ownership (189 million acres). Of the South’s forestland area, over 127 million acres are
classified as “family forests” (Butler and Leatherberry 2004)1. These family forests account for
some 4.3 million ownerships, over 43% of which are titled to individuals over age 65 – so most
of these lands will transfer ownership over the next 2-3 decades. According to data summarized
by Butler and Leatherberry (2004), the top 4 concerns of family forest owners in the South are
(1) disease and insects, (2) fire, (3) family legacy, and (4) taxes. These are sustainability
concerns – representing the risks to the resource, and uncertainty of maintaining ownership.
Two of these top concerns (“family legacy” and “taxes”) demonstrate that family forest
landowners are troubled by the consequences of their forestlands changing hands.
Integrated timber companies have traditionally managed large areas of forestlands to help supply
their mills in the region. As of 2002, there were about 36 million acres of industrial timberlands
in the region (Smith 2004). During the last 10 years however, the forest industry has been
divesting of its lands in the South – during this period, more than 18 million acres of industrial
forestlands have changed hands (Clutter et al. 2007). Nearly all integrated forest products
companies in the region have sold forest land holdings to real estate investment trusts (REITs) or
timberland investment organizations (TIMOs) (Wear 2007). The factors contributing to these
transactions include accumulated debts from corporate mergers, undervalued timberlands
reflected in stock prices, tax policies, and increased confidence in the long-term timber supply to
1 In the past, these forests were alternatively referred to as non-industrial private forestlands (NIPF) – but given
some recent shifts in forestland ownership, the distinction between industrial and non-industrial is not as clear as it
once was.
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the wood products industry2 (Wear 2007). As forestlands are constantly reappraised under these
new ownership structures, many holdings are likely to be sold in smaller parcels and eventually
developed.
With private forestlands (both family and industrial forests) changing hands at such historically
high rates, forests are increasingly vulnerable to fragmentation, urbanization, and development
(Wear 2007). According to Wear and Greis (2002), this trend is the most immediate threat to
forest sustainability in the Southeast.
The members of the Forest Breakout Group recognized that the fragmentation and loss of
forestlands, when combined with other trends can create an uncertain future for a range of public
values. In the context of military lands, these trends present continued challenges for
maintaining compatible land use adjacent to training installations. The forests on military
installations are not islands – they influence, and are influenced by, the land use outside the
fence. Inasmuch as military lands both contribute to and benefit from a sustainable forest
landscape in the region, it appears that sustaining the forestlands of the Southeast is in the best
interests of sustaining the nation’s military.
ISSUES
The Forest Breakout Group identified a number of major issues influencing the sustainability of
forest ecosystems in the Southeast. Taken as a whole, the challenges to sustainability of forests
in the region are considerable. The Breakout’s approach was to identify key social, economic,
and ecological factors likely to pose the greatest overall risks to sustaining the region’s
forestlands. From the outset, the group made the assumption that there was a strong military
interest in maintaining forestlands as a principle and primary land use throughout much of the
region. This interest acknowledges the clear public benefit of private forestlands; implicit in this
process is that any military engagement with private lands would include contributing to
innovative solutions for issues of maintaining sustainable forestlands – including working
forests.
1. Land Use Conversion and Loss of Forestlands. Throughout much of the pre-
ceding century, forest and woodlands were considered a residual land use. In
other words, forestlands were largely assumed to be unsuitable for any other
purpose. For landowners, the opportunity costs of alternative land uses were
given little attention. As forest products markets have weakened, the demand for
land consumption for suburban development, exurban development, and other
land uses has increased. The effect is ownership fragmentation, rapid conversion,
and loss of forestlands throughout much of the region. While some level of land
use conversion is likely inevitable, the overall strategy of a regional approach to
forest sustainability simply must include an objective for making forestlands more
economically favorable when compared to a competing land use. Alternatives
include measures for reducing the marketable value of forestland through
conservation easements, transferable development rights, or purchase of
2 An alternative way to look at confidence in the timber supply is that the market outlook for selling forest products
has weakened.
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development rights programs. Other approaches include modifications of the
federal estate tax, regulations such as rural zoning, and outright public purchase of
forestlands. To influence land use trends on the scale needed to sustain forest
land use across large areas, these approaches require more financial, political, and
social capital than is generally available. Thus the participants in this Breakout
Group identified a need to develop more innovative landowner incentives for
maintaining forestlands across a region dominated by private ownerships. Such
an approach might include the development of markets for the ecosystem services
resulting from well-managed forestlands.
2. A focus on forest ecosystem services. Under many of the projections considered
for the region, the increased population and development pressures, combined
with shifting forest ownership structures, weakened timber markets, and
insufficient incentives, are likely to result in a decrease in forestlands along with a
loss of natural forest functions. The increased population, however, will increase
demand for many of the services that forest ecosystems provide. The demands
will likely increase for water, recreation, wildlife habitats, air quality, nutrient
cycling, carbon storage, aesthetics, and other important services. This is not to
discount the importance of traditional commercial forest products, but to
emphasize that sustaining these ecosystem services are an increasingly important
focus. The challenges of assessing, monitoring, and valuing these ecosystem
services are emerging as important issues.
3. Markets for forest ecosystem services are poorly developed. In the past,
profitable and stable timber markets have contributed to maintaining forest land
use throughout much of the Southeast. Weak timber markets yield uncertainty
and a tendency to shift forestland to competing land uses. Creating landowner
benefits for a wider range of public values (i.e., ecosystem services) would
increase the likelihood that forestlands could compete favorably with alternative
land uses. If DoD and other partners can help create markets and other
mechanisms whereby landowners can be fairly compensated for investments in
maintaining important ecosystem services, then private landowners will be more
likely to implement measures to maintain forestlands and their conservation
values. These markets are not yet developed – and the challenges for such
development are not trivial. Such market development will require a spirit of
risk-taking, entrepreneurship, and a willingness to consider novel approaches.
The efforts required to combine the biological and physical sciences, economics,
sociology, and business management approaches in order to develop such markets
could be supported by DoD.
4. Demands on water quality and availability are likely to have an overriding
influence on forests, forest management, and the sustainability of forests in the
Southeast, and vice versa. Forested watersheds are a primary source of
freshwater in the region. Given projected population increases, concerns over
water quality and availability will continue to grow. The projections for future
water availability in parts of the region vary under different scenarios of
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population growth, urban expansion and changes in land use. Adding to the
uncertainty are scenarios that include climate change, recurring drought, and
changes in land use. Scenarios that include changes in agricultural programs and
policies to promote biomass-for-energy from forestlands may also have an impact
on regional water availability. The tools for projecting the consequences of these
and other scenarios are not yet well developed.
5. Cumulative effects of multiple disturbances to forestlands are not well
understood. Cumulative effects are the incremental impacts on the environment
that result from past and present disturbances. When combined with site-specific
conditions, the cumulative effects of multiple disturbances (including the
influence of management) can cause forestlands to be more or less vulnerable to
future disturbance. Experiences from the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and
Rita have demonstrated that the vulnerability of forest ecosystems to extreme
disturbance is a function of site factors, prior disturbance, and management
history (Stanturf et al. 2007). One of the high-priority needs is a more refined
understanding of the cumulative effects of multiple disturbances on forest
ecosystems. The cumulative impacts from invasive species, storms, fire, land use
history, fragmentation, and climate change are not well investigated. For
example, the scientific base for predicting the vulnerability of forests to
degradation due to pests, disease, or invasive species given the cumulative effects
of fire exclusion and climate change is poorly developed. With a more complete
understanding of cumulative effects, foresters and other land managers can make
better decisions for silvicultural treatments, harvest scheduling, and other
management actions for reducing long-term risk.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Most of the major impediments to sustainability of forest ecosystems in the Southeast are
regional in scope and multidisciplinary in nature; therefore, DoD will have to employ
multidisciplinary-based efforts to find proper solutions. The most effective and durable solutions
will likely result from collaboratively working with scientists, policy-makers and managers, both
within and outside DoD. Members of the Forest Breakout Group acknowledged that such
collaboration does not normally occur without some guidance. Thus, an effective approach for
the military will require that they engage scientists in a manner that compels DoD to collaborate
with managers and policy-makers.
Partnerships & Outreach
1. Strengthen DoD’s partnerships with universities, NGOs and federal agencies for
meeting high-priority research and technical assistance needs – engage the
Cooperative Ecosystems Studies Units (CESUs). Solutions to issues of forest
sustainability can be accomplished best when DoD managers engage directly with
teams of scientists from multiple disciplines. A strong example of such
interagency planning and coordination is SERPPAS, a regional-level partnership
that engages state governments, DoD, and other federal agencies in linking policy
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projects and issues with science-based tools. The Group recommends DoD
develop a parallel partnership for research and technical assistance. For the
ecological and natural resource sciences, DoD could more effectively participate
in the processes of scientific discovery, translational research, and demonstration
by engaging with interdisciplinary groups of scientists through the CESU
network. The CESU network is designed to address the research and technical
assistance needs of federal agencies through a collection of 17 regional units. The
Southeastern states are represented in two adjacent CESUs – the Piedmont CESU
and the Gulf Coast CESU. Both have active membership from a full range of
university-based research institutions. These units provide a venue for federal
agencies to work directly with teams of scientists from multiple educational
institutions and multiple disciplines. As the CESU network was established by
Congress, member federal agencies can collaborate directly with university
scientists to develop and implement work plans for research and technical
assistance. Such collaboration provides an advantage when addressing complex
ecological and natural resources issues. An initial response to this
recommendation might include working with a joint group of scientists from the
Piedmont and Gulf Coast CESUs to develop a research agenda for addressing the
high-priority needs expressed below.
2. Support education and public outreach programs. Many of the silvicultural
practices necessary for maintaining healthy forest ecosystems are commonly
misunderstood by the general public. Outreach and education programs
developed in collaboration with NGOs and university extension programs can
create a forum for increasing public acceptance. Important management
practices such as prescribed fire could particularly benefit from well-developed
outreach programs. Likewise, the concept of ecosystem services as a public good
from forestlands may require a well-designed public outreach campaign.
Policy Innovations
The Forest Breakout Group recommended several approaches for engaging in actions that could
result in advancements in policy.
1. Establish a program for developing new incentive structures and other policy
innovations for the conservation and stewardship of private forestlands. Within
the region, DoD should establish a program for developing and testing of a variety
of incentives for maintaining forestland conservation and management. An
overall aim of such an effort would be to create new and cost-efficient ways for
landowners to capitalize on the various public values of private forestlands. By
focusing resources on the development, testing and implementation of innovative
solutions for strategically discouraging conversion of forestlands to other land
uses, this program could yield analyses valuable for reducing the overall loss of
forestlands in areas of conservation interest – e.g., where compatible land use
with the military is a priority. This program should also aim to develop effective
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incentive structures for modifying silvicultural practices and rotation lengths
when and where they would likely benefit species and ecosystems of concern.
2. Move proposed and existing habitat crediting programs forward for
demonstration. DoD should move proposed and existing habitat crediting
programs into a demonstration phase – particularly for species and habitats that
are of important conservation interests to military installations. The USFWS
recently established a partnership agreement with USDA Natural Resources
Conservation Service (NRCS) and the Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies
(AFWA) to promote the effective use of habitat credit trading for Endangered
Species Act (ESA) listed or other at-risk species. Through this agreement, these
agencies acknowledged that translating conservation action into tradable habitat
credits may achieve environmental benefits more effectively than traditional
regulatory or voluntary approaches. While these programs are not yet well-
developed, substantial progress might be made through implementing habitat
crediting programs on an installation by installation basis.
Research
The Forest Breakout Group recommended the development of some broad research programs for
sustaining productive and biologically diverse forestlands in the Southeast.
1. Develop assessment standards, metrics, and monitoring protocols for measuring
ecosystem services from forestlands. Given that maintaining regulatory
compliance on military installations is a high priority issue, DoD should be at the
forefront in the development of alternative approaches for compliance. In
addition, being able to maintain an accurate periodic accounting of important
ecosystem services can serve as an important tracking of some elements of forest
sustainability (e.g., watershed performance, endangered species habitat
effectiveness, carbon sequestration, etc.). At the federal level, DoD should lead
science-based efforts to develop the “currency” for markets in ecosystem services.
If real markets for environmental credits, habitat credits, and other crediting
systems are to develop, then there must be a means for aggregating, brokering,
banking and tracking uniform units. Means for reliably assessing the provision of
several marketable ecosystem services could be developed for application through
crediting systems. Metrics and assessment standards must be accompanied by
appropriate monitoring protocols for both implementation and effectiveness.
2. Improve methods for assessing the cumulative effects of multiple disturbances on
forest ecosystems. Advances in GIS, remote sensing, analytical tools, and
systems modeling provide forest ecologists an opportunity to develop novel
approaches for assessing the vulnerability of forests to multiple disturbances.
Such systems provide a context for considering retrospective studies (i.e., natural
experiments) of the eventual impacts of multiple disturbances. A promising area
for advancement is in the development of spatially-explicit models that give
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scientists a framework for exploring landscape-scale and regional questions such
as:
• How are various combinations of large scale disturbances likely to
influence forest vulnerability to invasive species, pathogens, or pests?
• How altered fire regimes are likely to interact with other disturbances –
and what are the impacts on forest ecosystems?
• When combined with the effects of climate change, how are changing land
uses, fragmentation, and land management constraints likely to influence
forest sustainability?
3. Develop tools for projecting watershed performance and regional water
availability under scenarios of biomass-for-energy demand, shifting timber
markets, population growth, and climate change. Advances in computing, remote
sensing, and eco-hydrology modeling present opportunities to build advanced
simulation models for projecting watershed performance and water availability.
These models could be linked with other available models for scenario analyses of
changes in water resources in the face of population growth, climate change, and
shifting timber markets and the consequences of adopting alternative approaches
for biomass-for-energy programs. The Forest Breakout Group also discussed the
use of mediated modeling processes where stakeholders are used to assist in
developing some of the modeling parameters.
Literature Cited
Butler, B.J. and E.C. Leatherberry. 2004. America’s family forest owners. Journal of Forestry.
Oct/Nov 2004:4-9.
Clutter, M., B. Mendell, D. Newman, D. Wear. And D. Greis. 2007. Strategic factors driving
timberland ownership changes in the US South. Working Paper. Available at:
http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/econ/pubs/southernmarkets/
Floyd, D.W. 2002. Forest Sustainability: The History, the Challenge, the Promise. The Forest
History Society. Durham, NC. 83 p.
Smith, W.B., P.D. Miles, J.S. Vissage, and S.A. Pugh. 2004. Forest resources of the united
States, 2002. Gen. Tech. Rep. NC-241. St. Paul MN: US Department of Agriculture
Forest Service, North Central Research Station. 137 p.
Stanturf, J.A. S.L. Goodrick, and K.W. Outcalt. 2007. Disturbance and coastal forests: a
strategic approach to forest management in hurricane impact zones. Forest Ecology and
Management. In Press., doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2007.03.015.
X:\Library\Docsforclearance\DoD-SE-Reg-Plan-Sust.doc 32 1/23/2008
Wear, D.N. and J.G. Greis. 2002. The Southern Forest Resource Assessment: Summary Report.
USDA Forest Service. General Technical Report SRS-54, 103 pp.
Wear, D.N. 2007. Trends in Southeastern Forests. In Southeast Regional Planning &
Sustainability Workshop Report. Department of Defense. [see http://www.serdp-
estcp.org/workshops/serps/docs/Trends_in_Southeastern_Forests.pdf]
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LAND CORRIDORS
Michael Elliott
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
As DoD and the various branches of the military realign their military bases, base commanders
face new challenges. Management of land corridors outside of military bases are of particular
concern because such corridors provide training routes, special use airspace lanes, or connect one
military base to another. Land corridors take three major forms: conservation, infrastructure, and
development. Conservation corridors include contiguous land for protecting habitat and species
or for outdoor recreational uses. Infrastructure corridors include linear land for utilities, energy
distribution, railways, and roadways. Development corridors are linear land developments that
array themselves along infrastructure corridors, especially roadways, such as strip shopping
centers. Conservation or infrastructure land corridors are often compatible with military use,
while developed land corridors are usually incompatible. Of the three, conservation corridors are
likely to be the most beneficial to the military, because they prevent the military bases from
becoming islands of biodiversity, and because, unlike infrastructure corridors, they do not
promote residential or commercial growth.
In addition to protecting corridors for military training and connectivity purposes, conservation
corridors are important to military bases for several reasons. First, military bases often provide
large tracts of viable wildlife habitat surrounded by landscapes fragmented by development.
More regionally viable efforts to conserve larger landscapes would allow threatened and
endangered species to populate areas outside of the military bases where they now concentrate.
Second, conservation corridors provide “green infrastructure” that enhance ecosystem services
such as water supply and other related benefits to human communities. Third, current public
policy tools have been insufficient to prevent significant fragmentation. Fourth, conservation
corridor efforts are inherently interjurisdictional, and require the cooperation of multiple
jurisdictions, interest groups, and military bases. A common planning framework is needed, one
that is developed collaboratively. And fifth, the military can contribute significantly to both the
sustainability of their own bases and to the ecological, social, and economic sustainability of the
communities in which they reside by more fully engaging the process of conservation corridor
planning and implementation.
The Land Corridors Working Group identified five major issues associated with the
identification and protection of land corridors. These include: (1) the mismatch between the
spatial scale of the problems and the institutions available for communities and installations to
resolve those problems; (2) decision tools that marginalize the environment; (3) lack of
incentives to promote sustainability goals; (4) stove pipe thinking; and (5) the lack of capacity in
both the military and the community to engage in meaningful collaboration.
The Land Corridors Working Group considered alternative ideas for promoting more effective
conservation of militarily important corridors. The Working Group recommended as a primary
option that an installation or set of military installations identify a specific opportunity for
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corridor conservation, one where protection of the corridor(s) would promote both military and
community sustainability. The assessment would be followed by a collaborative effort to develop
a joint vision for this corridor, involving the various stakeholders and an effort to apply this
vision to evaluate corridor criteria, delineate corridor boundaries, and develop investment and
implementation strategies. This “Corridor of Dreams” is the highest priority because currently
the military lacks convincing examples of the value of conservation corridors and opportunities
for promoting such corridors. Creating such examples, and by doing so testing the concept, is an
important first step.
Additional options that could be used either in conjunction with a “Corridor of Dreams” pilot
project, or as stand-alone efforts to improve the military and the public’s capacity to identify,
assess, delineate, and implement such corridors, are as follows:
1. Promote greater coordination with local and regional partners, especially
involving academic communities and including strategic alliances. These would
assist in identifying and establishing corridors and capacity building within the
military, local, state, and federal jurisdictions. The improved coordination would
foster improved efforts to link academic education programs to resolving military
needs in the environmental and community development arenas.
2. Improve policy and planning processes associated with corridor planning and
implementation. These processes would be improved particularly by increasing
the resource base available for conservation efforts, creating incentives for
landowners and base commanders to initiate and participate in conservation
efforts, more proactively identifying encroachment threats, and supporting
research that increases the capacity to identify and conserve corridors.
3. Engage the academic institutions in action research that helps military
commanders deal with pressing problems, while also supporting basic science.
This interaction would help define and specify buffer and corridor needs, promote
best practices for building community collaboratives, evaluate ecosystem services
and clarify their importance to both the military and communities, test innovative
ideas through demonstration projects, develop better approaches to evaluating
land corridor projects than provided by cost benefit analysis, and improve the
capacity of decision makers to visualize the complex interactions found in
conservation corridors.
4. Craft tools to promote more effective information sharing through workshops,
develop guidebooks and toolboxes to assist governments to assess and implement
sustainable land use initiatives, and promote education.
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INTRODUCTION
Objectives (Overall)
As DoD and the various branches of the military realign their military bases, base commanders
face new challenges. Two concerns of particular interest to the Land Corridor Working Group
include threats to the capacity of military bases to engage in training consistent with the demands
of modern combat, and threats to the effective working relationship between the military and the
host communities that surround their bases. This working group therefore sought to identify high
priority issues associated with sustaining military training land and air space, as well as the
regional planning tools needed to promote compatible land use on lands outside the base.
The Working Group focused on land corridors, namely linear corridors created by currently
undeveloped lands or by linear infrastructure such as roadways or utilities, which are of potential
use to military bases in the area, particularly as aircraft flyways. As modern combat training
tactics increasingly require the use of airspace outside of military bases, the preservation of
aircraft flyway corridors for training is becoming increasingly important. While a range of land
uses remain compatible with flyways (industry, utilities, and conservation lands), many uses are
not (residences and commercial lands). Efforts to conserve corridors are therefore essential to the
long-range functioning of military bases.
What Is Meant By Land Corridors
Land corridors are lands with linear, contiguous land uses. From a military perspective, corridors
can provide training routes, special use airspace lanes, or connect one military base to another.
Both conservation and infrastructure corridors can serve these military functions. Conservation
corridors include contiguous land for protecting habitat and species (such as waterways,
migratory flyways, or special conservation areas designed to link up areas of biodiversity), as
well as outdoor recreational areas (including beaches, scenic trails, and human interest areas).
Infrastructure corridors include linear land for utilities, energy distribution, railways, and
roadways. Conservation corridors are likely to be the most beneficial to the military because they
serve the dual function of protecting wildlife habitat outside the military base borders, thereby
preventing the base from becoming an island of biodiversity, and because, unlike infrastructure
corridors, they do not promote residential or commercial growth. As a consequence, the Land
Corridors Working Group focused much of its attention on the protection of conservation
corridors.
Conservation Corridors As A Sustainability Strategy: An Overview
The primary justification for protecting conservation corridors is presented in “Land Corridors in
the Southeast: Connectivity to Protect Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services” by Thomas S.
Hoctor, et al. (2007). The Working Group noted certain trends and findings of particular
importance.
First, efforts to conserve biodiversity have moved away from small-scale efforts designed to
protect particular species in specific habitats and towards larger regionally scaled efforts to not
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only conserve these habitats but to connect them up through corridors that allows diverse habitats
to remain functionally interactive with each other. Connectivity for wildlife has been
increasingly seen as necessary to prevent development of biodiversity islands, where threatened
and endangered species concentrate into a few viable habitats. This is significant from the
military’s perspective because military bases are often the hub of this biodiversity. Military bases
often provide large tracts of viable wildlife habitat surrounded by landscapes fragmented by
development. More regionally viable efforts to conserve larger landscapes would allow
threatened and endangered species to populate areas outside of the military bases where they
now concentrate.
Trends leading to landscape fragmentation are not abating and may in fact be accelerating.
Population growth in the Southeast is causing natural landscapes to rapidly urbanize. While 18
million people currently reside in Florida, for example, 26 million are expected by 2030.
Moreover, current local and regional plans allow for 55 to 90 million people to live in Florida.
While 55% of Florida currently remains in a natural or semi-natural state, Florida loses one
percent of this land each year to development. Open space in urban and suburban communities
lacks sufficient ecological connectivity for wildlife and ecological networks to function
adequately.
Second, efforts to conserve land corridors have moved beyond a focus purely on wildlife
protection and toward a “multiple benefits” planning framework. The concept of “green
infrastructure” is used to describe the linkages between conservation corridors and protection of
lands that provide ecosystem services such as water supply and other related benefits to human
communities.
Third, public policy tools have been insufficient to prevent significant fragmentation. Land
acquisition is becoming more difficult due to sharply increasing land values. Growth
management in Florida has proven unsuccessful at directing growth into more productive
patterns, while growth management in other Southeastern states (particularly ones with strong
home rule constitutions) is for the most part even weaker.
Fourth, efforts to more proactively conserve natural corridors are inherently interjurisdictional,
and require the cooperation of multiple local and county jurisdictions, state government,
nonprofit conservation groups, and military bases. A common planning framework is needed,
one that is developed collaboratively and has the support of the various jurisdictions. Yet
planning by itself often fails to be implemented because the plans have no “teeth.” Incentives
are needed if these plans are to be implemented. The incentives can come from many sources. In
Texas, funding for corridor conservation is available, but difficult to obtain without an overall
plan. In poorer communities that want growth but also want to preserve their land and culture,
the maintenance of green infrastructure can lead to economic betterment.
Efforts to promote landscape-scaled conservation pose difficulties both political and scientific.
Politically, such conservation requires the cooperation of many jurisdictions, only one of which
is managed by the military. Scientifically, research at this scale is difficult to conduct, with issues
of performing sufficient replication on a large scale to verify ecosystem viability.
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Fifth, the military can contribute significantly not only to the sustainability of their own bases,
but also to the ecological, social, and economic sustainability of the communities in which they
reside by more fully engaging the process of conservation corridor planning and implementation.
Many local communities, particularly the smaller ones that abut many of the military bases, need
technical and planning assistance to engage issues of importance to both the community and the
base. In communities such as Beaufort, SC, with three military bases, support for military
functions is high but so is the impact of military activities. Airport noise overlays for the military
and regional airport, for example, requires ordinances for the conservation of lands with
significant noise contours, which in turn can be best designed through partnerships between the
military bases and the surrounding communities.
Too often communities successfully fight against BRAC closures only to allow the partnership
built to protect the base wane once the threat passes. But the sustainability of the base depends
on the long term viability of the training grounds as well as the natural resource base upon which
the installation depends. Examples of projects such as the Florida Greenway and the long term
planning of the Galveston Bay shows that military engagement can help keep the community
focused on conserving land corridors needed by both the base and the community. The Florida
Greenway is a plan established by DoD, the State of Florida, The Nature Conservancy, and other
partners for a 100-mile corridor of green space stretching from the Apalachicola National Forest
to Eglin AFB. Continued engagement with partners on projects such as the Florida Greenway
requires education of stakeholders and developers to make them aware of environmental benefits
of buffer areas and corridors and the potential to dovetail security with conservation concerns.
The significance of these linkages will vary between various bases and communities. Efforts to
prioritize the corridors and to plan for multiple uses – green and/or gray infrastructure and as
military routes – are needed. Information for better decision making must be developed. And
while communities adjacent to installations see the interdependency, communities farther
removed are less likely to collaborate. Meaningful incentives for regional collaboration must
therefore be expounded.
ISSUES
The Land Corridor Working Group identified five major issues associated with the identification
and protection of land corridors. These include the mismatch between the spatial scale of the
problems and the institutions available for communities and installations to resolve those
problems, decision tools that marginalize the environment, lack of incentives to promote
sustainability goals, stove pipe thinking, and the lack of capacity in both the military and the
community to engage in meaningful collaboration.
Spatial and Institutional Mismatch
Of all the problems discussed by the Working Group, the lack of institutional and planning
capacity to plan for sustainable development was considered the most important. Effective
planning for corridor protection usually emerges only after valuable lands are lost, when a crisis
focuses attention on the importance of what is being lost. Larger communities with resources to
plan often have already lost potential corridors to fragmentation, while communities with
unfragmented landscapes usually have little experience or capacity to engage in planning.
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This problem with internal capacity is compounded by institutional and political constraints to
corridor conservation. Corridors usually involve multiple jurisdictions, but the tools for
protecting the corridors are local. Thus, while corridor planning requires regional cooperation,
the planning and land use management tools are primarily imbedded in local governments. It is
here that the balancing of property rights with societal needs is conducted. While the costs of
corridor protection (loss of tax base, engagement in property rights disputes, potential short term
loss of economic opportunity) are all local, many of the benefits associated with preserving a
corridor (habitat protection, flood protection, species preservation, water quality maintenance)
are enjoyed by the region as a whole, including the military installation. The sustainability of the
community has implications for long-term viability of installations because installations often
rely on the community for water and sewer services because they draw from the same resource
base, yet the base rarely works to promote that off-base sustainability. Consequently, local
communities with major military bases typically under-invest in corridor protection.
Even within government, conflicting goals among public agencies (e.g., development vs.
conservation agencies) lead to conflicting programs. Authorizations, legislation, and
appropriations can exaggerate these conflicts. As an example, the need to promote higher
densities to make more land available for corridors is often countered by local ordinances that
encourage sprawl. In addition, tax policies and markets are encouraging large land holders (e.g.,
timber companies) to subdivide land into smaller parcels for development, thereby promoting
landscape fragmentation that further complicates the creation of conservation corridors.
Decision Tools that Marginalize the Environment
Effective decision making to promote corridor conservation faces a second major barrier, namely
the lack of decision support tools that would enable corridor planners to effectively design and
evaluate potential corridors, while valuing their cost and benefits. As environmental researchers
and planners have seen, conservation corridors serve multiple purposes and therefore effective
decision making for corridor planning must work across these multiple purposes. Decision
makers face three major constraints: (1) the need for tools to help better estimate environmental
values; the ability to conduct multi-attribute assessments; and the tools to enable military leaders
to better determine its own long term needs for corridors outside the base.
First, current decision tools tend to underestimate environmental values, particularly when such
values are long term. Part of this problem is generic, in that most decision tools use some
variation of cost-benefit analysis, and such analysis systematically underestimates non-economic
goods, such as are found in the environment. A different framework is needed for sustainability
(quantifying value of environmental services) which places less emphasis on the pecuniary costs
associated with project development and more on the non-pecuniary value of environmental
services. In addition, because decision-making for conserving and managing corridors is
complex and the scientific basis for assessing corridors is still being developed, additional
research is needed on wildlife movement and the effectiveness of different types of conservation
corridors at protecting habitat and species. Since they cannot wait until science provides clearer
answers, management needs to be adaptive to both changing conditions found on the ground and
new scientific knowledge about how to best manage conservation corridors. In addition, the
corridors are ecologically useful in as much as they connect hubs of habitat. Many military
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installations serve as ecological hubs; hence the management of the corridor needs to be linked
to the management of the base.
Second, decision tools tend to be focused on the needs of specific stakeholders and must be
better designed for multi-attribute analysis and to be shared between stakeholders. Given the
complexity of corridors, criteria for selecting corridors (based on stakeholder interests) need to
be linked to data about existing land uses and landscape values through methods that are
transparent and acceptable to multiple stakeholders.
GIS databases are a significant tool for linking interests to options because they allow the
resources to be visualized along the criteria of concern. GIS mapping allows the user to look at
the whole landscape, identify criteria, map landscapes, and select the most appropriate lands.
GIS databases are also increasingly interactive and allow users to test alternative scenarios. At
the same time, GIS databases require consistent, current data, and criteria needs to be developed
by the stakeholders who are partnering to design and implement the corridor. This requires
efforts to update data, such as land cover data which is now seven years old, on a more regular
basis. DoD may be able to be of significant help to communities in this regard. Stakeholder input
can also be coordinated by the stakeholders themselves. However, these processes require
significant resources, often provided by multiple stakeholders. Issues of resources, of who pays,
need to be addressed.
Third, military leaders are currently ill-equipped to assess long-term needs for land management
outside the boundaries of the military installation. The need to protect millions of acres for a
variety of needs, matching military training (combat training area effectiveness) with
sustainability (conservation), poses new challenges to base commanders. Is the military
commander adequately equipped to make these choices? Current experience with Joint Land Use
Studies to define buffer areas around military installations suggests that the task is difficult. The
military needs to know how it might use lands in the future to fight wars that have not yet been
fought with technology that has not been invented. Despite this uncertainty, the military is
increasingly realizing that it cannot isolate either its training or its other functions from the
communities that neighbor the installations. Hence, it is of significant importance that the
military starts developing the tools needed for base commanders to effectively engage questions
of the design and implementation of buffers (immediately outside the fence line) and corridors.
Unless lands are conserved, rapid land development will significantly limit future options.
Lack of Incentives to Promote Sustainability Goals
A fundamental challenge to conserving corridors is the lack of incentives to promote such
conservation. Most basically, the market for land provides a strong impetus for landscape
fragmentation, since it is based on individual choice. The current approach to development,
which promotes sprawl, is environmentally and economically unsustainable. Alternative
development patterns that cluster growth and preserve green space are increasingly seen as
desirable, but often are limited to the land area owned by a single developer. Larger, more
regional conservation efforts must be cobbled together from within this land market.
Certainly education of community residents and leaders as to the benefits of sustainable
development will help, but unless incentives are aligned to promote these goals, little progress
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will be made. Focused acquisition for habitats and other protected areas is useful but limited
because the very act of acquisition makes getting additional land more expensive, controversial,
and difficult. Military commanders may be able to do little to promote better alignment of market
mechanisms to support sustainability goals. They can, however, help create incentives systems to
support inter-jurisdictional planning, to promote more careful consideration of both the military
installation and the communities’ future together.
Incentives for promoting long term sustainability are also lacking in the military. In the Florida
Greenway area, the five military bases rarely speak to each other about conservation corridor
issues. The issue is strategic, involving choices that will not directly affect the base for many
years, and base commanders with short term concerns rarely focus on these issues.
Two additional observations should be made. First, many large land owners (e.g., timber
companies) are facing new market incentives to subdivide and develop their properties. Such
development would significantly impinge upon military installations. The military needs to
identify these owners and work with local and state political leaders to conserve properties of
particular concern to the military. This will mean making an incentives-based case to these
owners, whether they be publicly held corporations, REITS, or pension funds. Secondly, the
federal government is not particularly good at land acquisition and should rely on the expertise
of large land trusts such as The Nature Conservancy, and on state and local governments to buy
the buffers and easements.
Stovepipe Thinking
Conservation corridors require non-traditional partnerships that get leaders to apply sustainability
across traditional jurisdictions within the military, between the military and other federal
agencies (such as the Corps of Engineers as a potential partner in watershed and floodplain
corridor conservation), and between the military and surrounding communities. Planning for
such corridors often requires these stakeholders to think and act in a cross-disciplinary manner.
Yet most stakeholders are accustomed to resolving specific problems using specialized tools.
This specialization, and the fractured jurisdictions from which it springs, leads to “stovepipes”
among federal agencies and other levels of government, which reinforces traditional ways of
problem solving. Institutional and organizational supports will be needed if the military is to
encourage its leaders to break out of this stovepipe thinking.
The Lack of Capacity In Both the Military and the Community to Engage in Meaningful
Collaboration
Related to the concern for stove pipe thinking are barriers to effective engagement with other
jurisdictions and interest groups in a collaborative setting. Problems exist both in the capacity of
the stakeholders to set up a process of dialogue and in their ability to engage effectively in face-
to-face dialogue. Of particular concern, existing collaborative partnerships often exclude local
governments, developers, environmentalists, and other interest groups. Working Group members
felt that neither the military nor local officials are investing enough in outreach to the other.
On the military side, considerable variety exists as to the capacity of base commanders and
personnel to effectively assess and communicate strategic interests regarding encroachment on
the installation and associated corridors. Currently, however, DoD’s policies promote
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engagement with communities around issues of localized buffers, but not conservation corridors.
A DoD policy statement and commitment to the problems posed by land corridors is needed.
Many of the base personnel who manage community outreach have additional responsibilities
and therefore do not regard outreach as their primary concern. The installations rarely create
functional teams of personnel with skills in community outreach, GIS, natural resources, noise,
and other areas of concern to the base and the community. In addition, there may be a stigma
associated with working on sustainability planning coming from its association with endangered
species law. Finally, the military’s fiscal and administrative functions are separated from its
planning system, thereby limiting resources for planning.
Likewise, local officials lack tools and regional planning capacities to cooperate on corridors.
They also lack funding and are not provided with the direct authority for this sort of
coordination. Effective mechanisms are lacking for transferring capacity from urban to rural
areas (where the military may get the “biggest bang for the buck”). The situation is exasperated
by a lack of civic capacity to manage complex problems including tax structures and inter-
jurisdictional fragmentation. Councils of Government and Metrocouncils provide greater
institutional support for region-wide initiatives, but few communities are incorporated into such
councils. Who then will initiate efforts to create a “big table” to get all interests talking? Who
will identify the multiple stakeholders with their differing needs, interests, and perspectives?
RECOMMENDATIONS
The Land Corridors Working Group considered alternative ideas for promoting more effective
conservation of corridors of importance to the military. The Working Group was particularly
interested in identifying opportunities with high payoffs and some reasonable chance of success.
They took as their starting point that because corridors are linear, corridors are primarily inter-
jurisdictional in scale, even when the corridor itself is relatively small. Corridor projects are also
highly inter-connected, with military, social, economic, and environmental consequences linked.
In addition, they saw conservation corridors as places without clear boundaries, that the mapping
of these corridors requires criteria drawn from military and community interests in military
preparedness, ecological integrity, and community health. Thus, most corridor projects will
emerge not from the needs of the military alone, but from a process of research, assessment, and
collaborative problem solving amongst the various stakeholders.
Primary Opportunity: Identify, Assess, Delineate, and Implement a “Corridor of Dreams” Pilot
Project
The Group therefore recommended as a primary option that a military base, or possibly a set of
military installations, identify a pilot project for corridor conservation, one where protection of
the corridor(s) would promote the military and community sustainability. The project would
identify military bases where conservation of military corridors (for training or connectivity
between bases) would also afford significant opportunity to protect natural species, provide
hazards mitigation, promote renewable energy resources, enhance water resources, recreation,
public health, and enhance community economic opportunities. The assessment would be
followed by a collaborative effort to develop a joint vision for this corridor involving the various
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stakeholders and an effort to apply this vision to evaluate corridor criteria, delineate corridor
boundaries, and develop investment and implementation strategies.
A pilot project to develop a “Corridor of Dreams” is considered the highest priority
recommendation because currently the military lacks convincing examples of the value of
conservation corridors and opportunities for promoting such corridors. Perhaps a pilot project
related to the long-leaf pine ecosystem corridor between Fort Benning, Fort Rucker, and Eglin
AFB would offer a good start. Creating more such examples, and by doing so testing the
concept, is an important first step.
The following four sections explore options that could be used either in conjunction with a
“Corridor of Dreams” pilot project, or as stand-alone efforts to improve the military’s capacity to
identify, assess, delineate, and implement such corridors. The options fall into four major
categories:
• Opportunities for greater coordination with local and regional partners, especially
involving academic communities,
• Opportunities to improve policy and planning processes,
• Opportunities for enhanced research, including sharing and collaboration among
researchers, and
• Tools to promote more effective information sharing.
Promote Local-Regional Cooperation
1. Strategic Alliances to Promote Corridors. Emphasis should be given to creating
corridors that serve multiple purposes, thereby enhancing resources and
commitment to implementation. This means that the military should seek to
identify places were military training needs, particularly flyways, can be matched
to grey infrastructure (utility and roadway) and green infrastructure (biodiversity
and environmental quality) corridors. Efforts to promote collaborative
community-military planning can also help protect against future BRAC closures,
since corridor protection will increase the value of the base to the military.
2. Capacity Building Within the Military. Build institutional capacity for
collaboration within the military by providing start-up funding and skill building
training. Provide additional military personnel to staff community outreach
efforts. The Marine Corps, for example, employs regional land use community
liaison officers to coordinate community planning efforts. Create a “Center for
Sustainable Planning” within the military. Coordinate among military bases and
between the Armed Services about issues of regional importance by creating
forums for inter-base coordination and outreach.
3. Local, State, and Federal Capacity Building. Engage local and regional
communities in creating vision for corridors. Support the establishment of forums
to promote a broader dialogue about opportunities for corridor conservation.
Support GIS and visualization modeling that can be used by military installations
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to work more effectively with local communities. Reach out to NGOs and
corporations to promote mutual interests, and to local public officials to generate
political and financial resources needed to plan for corridors. At the state and
federal level, reach out to state environmental and natural resource agencies – US
EPA, NPS, USFWS, USFS and other federal land management agencies – for
opportunities to protect environmentally sensitive lands such as total maximum
daily limits (TMDL) stressed watersheds.
4. Linkages with the Academia. Cooperation with local institutions of higher
education can help build the capacity of both the military and local agencies to
collaborate across jurisdictional lines. Build education and practice linkages with
academia that promotes student education through internships and case-based
work, using military bases as labs. This would promote cross training between
environmental science and military missions. The ability of students emerging
from such programs to deal with military-community environmental issues would
be thereby increased, and the military would help train the next generation of
military environmental planners.
Implement Policy Needed to Support Corridor Conservation
1. Increase the Resource Base for Conservation Efforts. While the military cannot
directly lobby elected officials, other interested stakeholders can. Engagement
with those stakeholders therefore has multiple benefits to the military. Regional
partners can lobby elected officials for legislation and resources to promote and
develop plans for corridors. Provide additional resources to military programs
such as the Army Compatible Use Buffer (ACUB) program and the Renewable
Energy Production Incentive (REPI) program. Examine other sources of
legislative funding that can be linked to corridor protection, such as farm
preservation sections of the Farm Bill and transportation enhancements associated
with the transportation bill.
2. Create Incentives for Landowners to Participate in Conservation. Incentives to
promote landowner willingness to either conserve land or sell to a buyer who will
conserve the land are needed. Funding to generate resources for conservation can
come from bond issues or through ecosystem utility taxes for environmental
services. The skills of NGO land trust intermediaries such as The Nature
Conservancy will often be necessary because of their capacity to work with the
particular concerns of property owners. Such NGOs can also work to manage
market timing by providing temporary protection when resources for permanent
protection are not yet forthcoming.
3. Create Incentives for Military Initiatives. Base commanders and managers will
address issues of sustainability only if such initiatives are encouraged and
rewarded. This can take many forms, including incorporation into commander
evaluations and the issuance of directives. In addition, current sustainability
programs, which tend to focus on internal base management, can be expanded to
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include external issues. Given the short tenure of most base commanders, special
attention is needed to build long term relationships with external stakeholders.
4. Identify Encroachment Threats. Explicit military planning is needed to assess
encroachment threats, identify buffer and corridor needs to manage these threats,
and define criteria and standards for corridors. These in turn will provide the type
of information needed by base commanders to allocate resources to corridor
conservation efforts. Each military installation needs to have an encroachment
plan to identify lands needed for buffers, easements or corridors. It might be
helpful for an independent review or audit of the adequacy of these plans. Lessons
should be drawn from the ACUB program and the Installation Natural Resource
Management Plans (INRMPs).
Support Research that Increases the Capacity to Identify and Conserve Corridors
1. Identify Corridors. Engage the local/regional academic institutions in action
research that is interactive, problem-focused, adaptive, and responsive will help
military commanders deal with pressing problems, while also providing resources
to academic institutions to convert theoretical research on conservation corridors
into practical assessments. At the same time, support for basic science on the
ecological characteristics and functioning of corridors is also needed. Together,
advances in both basic and applied science will help identify, inventory, assess,
evaluate, and specify optimal selection criteria for corridors of concern.
2. Definitions of Buffer and Corridor Needs. A better working understanding of
what should be included within and excluded from buffers and corridors needs to
be identified. While each installation is different, installations do not have the
ability to research how to delineate buffers and corridors at the installation level.
Research needs to be conducted to: identify densities and appropriate uses, keyed
to mission; provide standards needed for a rational basis for decisions (including
issue of light, height standards, noise and safety); provide a clearer sense of
compatible land use criteria; and delineate the payoff associated with protecting
such land uses to both the community and to the base.
3. Best Practices for Building Community Collaboratives. Conduct research into
best practices for communicating the importance of corridors and other messages,
including polling and focus groups will help military officers present a clearer
case for the need for corridor conservation.
4. Research on Military Efforts to Conserve Corridors and Buffers. Develop
innovative ways to promote academic research and participatory action research
(engaging the community) through programs such as the Strategic Environmental
Research and Development Program’s (SERDP) focus on Statements of Need, the
inventory of plans, the status of plans, identification of tasks to accomplish the
assessment and evaluation, optimal selection criteria, methods for engaging with
the community, and improved methods for adaptive management.
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5. Evaluate Ecosystem Services. Promote research into a more sound accounting
system to evaluate ecosystem services. One promising approach is through energy
comparisons based on measures of emergy (solar emjoules), that assesses energy
investment for energy return in both the ecosystem and the human system.
6. Demonstration Projects. Demonstration projects of two kinds are needed: first, to
identify candidate communities or sites for corridor projects, such as a Benning-
Rucker-Eglin corridor, and secondly, application of the Environmental Security
Technology Certification Program or DoD-Legacy demonstration projects to
identify best available techniques for corridor assessment, evaluation and
communication.
7. Cost-Benefit Analysis. A fundamental problem with current assessment tools is
the dominant role played by cost benefit analysis and its corresponding bias
against values that cannot be quantified as economic benefits. This problem can
be addressed in three ways. First, researchers can develop better ways to integrate
ecosystem services into cost-benefit analysis by studies that identify the economic
benefits of ecological services. Second, they can use cost-benefit techniques with
more caution, focusing more on ecologically based assessment systems. Third,
real market values can be created for environmental services which are then
reflected in property values and income streams, such as by carbon sequestration
programs.
8. Cost Benefit Research on Use of Corridors for Military Uses. Conduct an
assessment as to the impact of military loss of airways, as well as efforts to
relocate or add new airways (chartered Special Use Airways) for military use.
9. Visualization. Problems of visualizing the complex decisions needed to conserve
corridors require improved tools for GIS-based multi-attribute assessment.
Visualization tools are needed that also create, refine and simplify with a focus on
promoting quality of decisions, by improving the capacity of decision makers to
interact with GIS based systems, including options to explore alternative
scenarios.
Promote More Effective Information Sharing
1. Workshops. Sponsor regional and community workshops to help promote
communication through information exchange processes. Workshops can also
serve as a forum for clarifying information needs by stakeholders and sources
thereof for planning.
2. Guidebook/Toolbox for Local Governments. Given that many communities
located near military bases lack the resources to engage in effective planning, the
development of guidebooks and toolboxes targeted to sustainable development
and conservation corridors can help raise both awareness and capacity of local
governments to engage in a collaborative with military bases.
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3. Education. Awareness of conservation corridors can be further enhanced by
working with local schools to promote awareness and understanding of corridors.
More generally, mapping often helps people visualize the importance of a
resource. This can be particularly effective if community members are engaged in
assessing the resource, such as when students gather data for the mapping.
4. Educate the Public about Benefits of Corridors. Examine and share the potential
benefits associated with the protection of corridors. These include water quality,
air quality protection, mitigation for climate change, protection of traditional
communities, and reduction in costs for roads and other infrastructure. The
American Farmland Trust has placed some of this data on its website. Members of
the Working Group noted that while the long-term costs associated with
development should be studied, communities have largely ignored previous
studies examining these questions.
Literature Cited
Hoctor, T. et al. 2007, Land Corridors in the Southeast: Connectivity to Protect Biodiversity and
Ecosystem Services. In Southeast Regional Planning & Sustainability Workshop Report.
Department of Defense. (http://www.serdp-
estcp.org/workshops/serps/docs/Land_Corridors_in_the_Southeast.pdf)
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BUILT ENVIRONMENT
Phil Berke
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The Southeast is expected to experience unprecedented pressures for urban expansion over the
next three decades. During the past half century, conventional low-density development (or
sprawl) has increasingly dominated the landscape by converting vast expanses of open space into
roads, parking lots, roofs, and driveways. This pattern of development cannot be sustained
without a fundamental rethinking of how we Americans build cities and develop the landscape.
The Built Environment Breakout Group identified major issues that are barriers to countering
conventional development practices, and offered policy and research recommendations to reform
such practices. The aim is to move urban design and planning in a more sustainable direction,
rather than simply reacting only after significant and often irreversible loss has occurred. The
group recognized that a sustainable Southeast cannot be achieved without a coherent and
supportive physical framework. On such a landscape, human settlements are located and built
through a planned process so as to allow sustaining military training land, regional planning, and
compatible land use.
Key issues include: (1) local plans and ordinances dominated by land use and urban design
standards that support sprawl; (2) low capability of local jurisdictions to prepare plans and
ordinances often results in “ecological train wrecks” wherein places with the most to lose (open
spaces and natural resources) are least able to take proactive action; (3) spatial mismatch
between local governance and regional landscapes; and (4) failures of land development markets
to account for the worth of ecosystem services and public facilities.
Policy recommendations for reforming conventional development practices include:
(1) strengthen intergovernmental partnerships through establishing a national sustainability
coordinating council and conducting annual sustainability audits; (2) strengthen plan making and
implementation by requiring or strongly encouraging state, regional, and local sustainability
plans, and (3) build state, regional, and local capability to plan by making scientific information
more accessible, establishing sustainability planning teams on military bases, improving public
engagement programs, and creating university-based sustainability institutes.
Research recommendations include: (1) develop a new generation of fully enabled web-based
regional land use planning and impact modeling systems that are readily accessible to state, local
and military base staff; (2) create and apply a sustainability audit tool for local plans and
ordinances; (3) develop a institutional performance assessment model (IPAM) to gauge the
strength of regional partnerships, and how such partnerships perform in delivery of core regional
planning goals; (4) develop tracking and early warning systems for military base managers to
react to land use changes in buffers and corridors before, or as, they are occurring; (5) test social
marketing strategies designed to communicate and build awareness about the environmental,
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social and economic consequences of policy choices about future human settlement patterns; and
(6) new science and technology needs for green buildings and neighborhoods.
INTRODUCTION
In the next thirty-four years, the U.S. will add 100 million people to the current population of
300 million, and metropolitan and coastal areas in the Southeast will absorb a disproportionately
larger share of this growth compared to the rest of the nation (Godschalk, 2007). Where will
these people live, work, shop, and recreate? What will be the impacts of growth on the military’s
ability to train, and the well-being of human and natural systems? What are the likely
differences in impacts produced by alternative development policies and plans?
Timothy Beatley (2007),in his background paper for Build Environment Breakout Group,
“Sustainable Cities in the Southeast,” observes that the predominant paradigm of unfettered
urban expansion cannot be sustained without a fundamental rethinking of how cities are built and
the landscape developed. He notes that unfettered urban expansion results in disinvestment in
central cities, separation by race and income, increased energy demands, deterioration of air and
water quality, loss of agricultural lands and wilderness, and the erosion of society’s built heritage
are one interrelated community-building challenge, and that much of these adverse impacts result
from unfettered urban expansion. The sobering fact is that these impacts are not unexpected. As
urban growth accelerates across open landscapes, the potential for environmental, social,
psychological, and economic impacts escalates accordingly. Beatley (2007) contends that at the
same time, advances in green technologies, revised understanding of the relationships between
urbanization and ecological disturbance, and new thinking about compact urban form have
increased opportunities to integrate knowledge about sustainable communities into the design
and development of the built environment.
Beatley (2007) emphasizes the importance of having a proactive urban design and planning
program in place to move society in a more sustainable direction, rather than simply reacting
only after significant and often irreversible loss has occurred. Such a program can be broadly
construed to include not just a comprehensive plan, but also implementation practices that
include regulations, incentives, and infrastructure investments used to guide the location, type,
density and design of development. This approach prevents or minimizes adverse impacts in the
first place, and supports green building technologies, open spaces and biodiversity, affordable
and energy efficient housing, and multi-modal transportation systems.
While proactive planning and policy making is a potentially effective long-term solution, Beatley
(2007) offers considerable evidence that existing local plans and programs, especially in the
Southeast, are lagging and do not encourage more sustainable development. In addition, public
apathy and a lack of political will may also hamper sustainability planning efforts. Beatley
(2007) contends that sustainable development has created a new understanding of the need to
plan future actions rather than simply respond to each crisis that may arise. Planning for
sustainable development links concerns for environmental, social, and economic well being in a
participatory process aimed at meeting present needs while preserving the ability of future
generations to meet their needs.
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In the context of the DoD initiative in regional planning, participants in the Built Environment
Breakout Group recognized that a sustainable Southeast with economic vitality, community
stability, and environmental health cannot be sustained without a coherent and supportive
physical framework. On such a landscape, human settlements are located and built through a
planned process so as to allow sustaining military training land, regional planning, and
compatible land use. As reported in this chapter, participants identified major barriers to
applying sound sustainable development principles, and recommended potential changes to
planning and development practices, and research directions. The intent is to encourage the
federal, state, regional, and local governments, and private and non-profit sectors to take action
down a sustainable path.
ISSUES
The Built Environment Breakout Group identified four crucial issues associated with urban
development patterns that dominate the U.S. landscape, and particularly in the Southeast: weak
plans and ordinances; low capability to plan and ecological train wrecks; spatial mismatch in
regional governance; and market failures.
Weak Local Plans and Ordinances
Successful examples of how individual communities integrate smart growth and green urbanism
design standards into local plans and ordinances have been documented (Beatley, 2007) .
However, relatively few communities have plans and ordinances with specific, well-developed
provisions that promote these sustainable urban forms. In the Southeast, the problem is
particularly significant as local planning is dominated by policies and urban design standards that
support conventional development patterns or sprawl.
Several dimensions of contemporary local plans and implementation practices under the
conventional development paradigm were identified as particularly weak, including:
• Lack of integration of science-driven information that provides a fact base for
protecting critical natural areas (wildlife habitats, wetlands, watersheds) and
working landscapes (farms and forests).
• Short-term economic benefits of sprawl are prioritized over long-term costs
associated with provision of public infrastructure and services (roads, sewer and
water utilities, fire, police) resulting in delays in commuting, and increased rates
of loss of natural areas and working landscapes in these same areas.
• Lack of attention to inter-jurisdictional coordination (among local governments,
and between military bases and local governments) results in lack of protected
landscape ecosystems and efficiently coordinated land uses with public
infrastructure investments.
• Weak monitoring programs that lack specific, scientifically-sound metrics to
gauge progress in plan implementation and performance in achieving public
goals.
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The consequences of weak plans and ordinances are foreboding. They point to limited
knowledge about existing human and natural resource systems, urban development impacts on
these systems, and regional-scale land use and community design solutions to counter prevailing
conventional development trends. They also indicate the inability of local planning programs to
address threats to military bases as buffers surrounding installations and corridors linked to them
are under intense urban development pressure that generates incompatible land uses.
Low Capability and Train Wrecks
Communities that are well-endowed with open spaces and natural resources usually have low
capability to prepare plans and ordinances to counter conventional development patterns. These
places, often referred to as “exurbs,” are typically rural and located near the urban fringe, where
conversion of open space to urban development does not usually encounter the same fierce
development opposition as development proposals in built-up urban areas. Exurban
communities have limited capability to anticipate and accommodate change, and often contain
open spaces that are buffers adjacent to military bases and land corridors needed for military
training (Carellas and Shanks, 2007).
A land use management paradox commonly takes place in these communities because they
become active in planning only after they experience significant loss. The paradox arises when
communities adopt strong planning programs after many critical natural resources they intend to
protect have been lost to development. Former Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt aptly
called these events “train wrecks,” because they stimulate protection efforts that are reactions to
an ongoing crisis – e.g., loss of seagrass in the Chesapeake Bay, water quality declines in the
Everglades, loss of spotted owl habitat in the Northwest. The paradox also applies to disaster
resiliency, and its converse, vulnerability. Communities adopt strong hazard mitigation plans,
regulatory ordinances, and hazard land acquisition measures only after a disaster or intensive
hazard area development has already taken place. In these instances, action is reactive to
problems, rather than proactive to avert problems like loss of natural resources, and human life
and property.
What emerges from the paradox is a low level of capability and willingness for proactive
planning, and reactive practices that lead to temporarily increased capability which is much less
effective in accomplishing planning goals. This pattern of behavior represents a significant
threat to military bases that depend on compatible land uses in buffers and corridors. Without the
warning signals of unsuitable land uses, habitat fragmentation, water quality decline, and
increased disaster vulnerability, communities (and military installations) lack ample motivation
to take action.
Spatial Mismatch Between Governance and Landscapes
A spatial mismatch exists between the scale at which local governments need to protect
landscapes, create livable cities, and limit encroachment on buffers and corridors needed by
military bases, and the scale at which land planning and policy-making is traditionally carried
out. This mismatch is apparent in regions throughout the U.S., where a tradition of home rule and
localism dominates amid landscapes that require thinking and planning on regional scales.
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Several significant consequences of this mismatch were identified:
• Local governments direct too much effort toward identifying and protecting
isolated patches of open landscapes often surrounded by urban development. This
approach fails to take advantage of existing natural areas by connecting existing
patches and corridors that may span across local jurisdictional boundaries.
• Fragmented land use regulatory authority keeps local governments weak. With
regional landscapes chopped into dozens or even hundreds of governing entities,
many local governments are too small and have inadequate tax bases to support
the capacity to plan to deal with the widening challenges of urbanization.
• Fragmented governance stimulates sprawl-inducing competition among multiple
jurisdictions for desirable commercial, industrial, and residential tax bases. The
consequences are decreased shares of office space within existing central business
districts, less centrality of development nodes in regions, longer commutes, and
more sprawl.
Furthering fragmenting governance of land use are the regional authorities, special districts, and
state and federal agencies that make separate decisions about land development and conservation
within the same regions. The Atlanta Region Commission, for example, a moderate size
metropolitan planning commission of 3.8 million people, includes 66 municipalities and 10
counties (www.atlantaregional.com), not to mention numerous other entities that influence land
use, including federal programs that involve metropolitan transportation planning, habitat
protection, and hazard mitigation; state land use and environmental regulations; multiple sewer
and water authorities; and dozens of school districts. Many of these decisions also have bearing
on development decisions inside military bases.
These divisions artificially divide regions that otherwise would represent single, interconnected
ecological communities, as well as social and economic communities. They also complicate
efforts to initiate cooperative planning, cross-boundary data collection, and coordinated decision-
making.
Market Failures: Ecosystem Services and Public Facilities
In the conventional development paradigm of urbanization, market decisions about land use fail
to account for the worth of ecosystem services (e.g., wetlands that mitigate floods and filter
pollutants, forests that sequester greenhouse gases and offer recreation) and many types of public
facilities (e.g., parks, roads, civic spaces, and libraries) that are valued by human communities.
By ignoring these values, the marketplace does not price these services − allowing, say,
destruction of wetlands that masks environmental costs and the lack of investment in public
facilities. As a result, the conversion of land to urban development is done more cheaply by not
accounting for the ultimate cost to communities and regions through higher taxes to treat water
and the under-supply of public facilities.
The main concern is that land market decisions are based on the concept of “highest and best
use” which is narrowly aimed at maximizing monetary profit for a specific development site.
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Land values are dictated by market forces and four feasibility tests: (1) legally permissible uses
allowed under zoning; (2) physically possible uses given the size, shape, and topographic
characteristics of a site; (3) financially viable uses that generate adequate revenue to justify the
costs of construction plus a profit; and (4) maximum profit uses among uses that are legal, fit the
site characteristics, and financially viable. Under this conception of land value, ecosystem
services are assumed to be free, invulnerable, and infinitely available, and public facilities are
often not included in suburban developments.
Given this narrow conception of value, markets are unable to provide ecosystem services and
public facilities in desired quantities. The long-term costs of not providing them may greatly
exceed the short-term economic benefits of the development built to its “highest and best use.”
These costs are generally hidden from conventional economic accounting, but are nonetheless
real and are usually borne by society at large.
This suggests a need for policies that achieve a balance between sustaining ecosystem services
and pursuing the worthy goals of economic development. The implications for military
installation are significant. Forested lands, wetlands, and well-managed working landscapes that
located in corridors and buffers surrounding bases usually provide higher levels of services when
they are not impaired by urban development. Thus, appropriate market adjustments would serve
the dual purpose of supporting ecosystem services and maintaining military capability to train.
Policies are also needed to ensure adequate level of public facilities when base expansion occurs
and demands for housing and services increase in the surrounding region.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Policy
The basic challenge for reforming conventional development practices that dominate urban form
is to convert the crisis- (or train wreck-) driven system of development to a planning- and threat-
driven system so that it becomes proactive rather than reactive. The aim is to ensure the long-
term viability of military installations, developing coordination of regional partnerships with
outside stakeholders, and creation of sustainable and compatible human settlements. The Built
Environment Breakout Group recommended various possibilities for strengthening proactive
sustainability planning in three main areas: strengthen intergovernmental partnerships that are
proactive; strengthen planning requirements and incentives; and build capability to plan.
Strengthen Intergovernmental Partnerships
1. Establish national sustainable community coordinating council. At the federal
level, DoD should not act alone but join with other federal agencies that have a
common interest in creating sustainable communities and regions (e.g., EPA,
DHS/FEMA, DOT, HUD). A national sustainable community coordinating
council should be established among the agencies. Long-term viability of military
installations should be but one element of a broader national policy on sustainable
communities. A key role of this group would be to coordinate and integrate
individual federal planning requirements into a comprehensive effort aimed at
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preparing and implementing a sustainable community strategy. The goal is to
build sustainability criteria not just into DoD planning initiatives but also into
public infrastructure improvement, disaster resiliency, energy conservation, and
all other guidance systems for managing built environments.
2. Produce annual sustainability audits. DoD should be responsible for assembling
and publishing a regular “sustainability” audit for its bases and surrounding
regions to educate Congress and the American people about the issues and trends
of urbanization and viability of installations, the plans, programs and projects
design to address them, and the economic, social, and environmental benefits of
the plans, programs and projects. National sustainability policy is derived from
trends and threats identified in the audit before they become train wrecks and
communicated to DoD installations and states, which make plans and projects to
counteract identified potential train wrecks. The sustainability audit should
include:
• Information on indicators, such as acres of protected corridors lands and
buffers surrounding installations needed to ensure training, vehicle miles
traveled, number of days that exceed air quality pollution limits, number
of housing units that are affordable to low-income residents including
military personnel and civilian staff, and so forth.
• Audits for each military installation that are cumulatively compiled by
region surrounding the installation, states, and the Southeast as a whole.
• Projected impacts from scenarios of major trends and emerging issues for
large metros and coastal regions under present conditions and growth
estimates.
Strengthen Planning
1. Require state and local sustainability planning and implementation. The existing
planning system in states varies across the Southeast. Ranging from states that
adopt state planning policies and require local plans to be consistent with state
policies to states that have no state planning policies and no local planning
requirements (Godschalk, 2007).
States and local governments should prepare and update sustainability plans that
anticipate and accommodate growth. State policies should also require or at least
strongly encourage local governments through incentives to create sustainability
plans. Key provisions to be included in local plans include:
• Knowledge base that draws upon sound science, and presents existing and
emerging conditions related to urban development and conservation;
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• Policies (e.g., regulatory, incentives, land acquisition) that correct market
failures to protect ecosystem services and supply adequate public services,
and are designed to advance sustainable urban development patterns;
• Provisions that account for local jurisdiction to coordinate with
neighboring communities to address transboundary issues; and
• Implementation requirements that include assignment of responsibilities
for implementation actions, monitoring and gauging plan performance,
and regular updating of plans.
This planning effort should include full-time planning staff at state and local
levels that are adequate to deal with the issues. Local sustainable community
plans resulting from these planning processes are reviewed and approved by
states. Each local plan should be reviewed annually according to their benchmark
targets, and those that achieve the targets are certified as “sustainable managing”
local governments. State programs could also be reviewed and those that have
effective programs could also be certified. Certified state and local governments
become eligible for higher funding levels and additional procedure flexibility.
2. Institute regional-scale planning. Establish regional-scale plans and policies to
ensure sustainable regions as well as sustainable communities. Regional-scale
issues that cover natural systems (river basins, coastal areas, and wildlife
habitats), transportation systems, and housing affordability (to avoid pockets of
poverty in some communities) should be addressed. This could take place
through a variety of mechanisms like state-sponsored regional plans and planning
agencies (as is used in Florida and Georgia), intergovernmental agreements in the
form of interstate compacts (as is used in planning for the Chesapeake Bay and
Lake Tahoe regions), and memorandums of agreement among local governments
and substate regional planning agencies. Mandates or incentives (or a mix of
both) could be used to foster local plan compliance with regional plans. DoD
could assist the agencies involved in initiating regional planning processes as in
the case of the Sustainable Sandhills regional planning effort near Fort Bragg,
North Carolina, and regional corridor planning for Eglin AFB, Florida.
Build Capability
1. Make information accessible to assist sustainability planning and policy-making.
Prominently missing from plans is a sound scientific fact base. The advent of
mapped databases (GIS) provides new opportunities for improving the quality of
information and predicting outcomes. New analytical tools allow planners and
policy makers to assess the ecological, social, fiscal, public service and economic
impacts of land use and development policy decisions. These databases and
models are needed to guide urban development into suitable locations and away
from high value conservation areas. Standard databases for sustainability
planning should be shared and made available by clearing houses.
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2. Establish sustainability planning teams to build capability. Military installations
should establish sustainable community teams, whose mission is to build capacity
to plan at regional and local levels. A key of this initiative would be to cultivate
local leaders to become sustainability advocates through workshops and
information exchange. These teams are made up of skilled and experienced
spatial data (GIS) analysts, urban and conservation planners, and facilitators. To
assist in this task DoD should establish sustainability planning institutes at
universities in the Southeast – see recommendation #5 below.
3. Create university-based sustainability institutes. The institutes would bring
together interdisciplinary groups of faculty, professionals, and students in the
social sciences, natural sciences, urban planning, and environmental policy. DoD
base operators, scientists and outreach staff would also be actively engaged. The
institutes would conduct cutting-edge research on sustainable community design,
and disseminate that knowledge through innovative teaching and outreach.
Rather than serving as outside contractors, the staff of the institutes would offer
an in-house capability to DoD to support active engagement – this would enhance
the relevance of research, the responsiveness to particular needs, and that research
is used effectively.
4. Develop communication, public engagement, and leadership building strategies.
The importance of plans and policies that advance sustainable urban forms is
apparent to most planners and conservation scientists. However, it has not been
made clear to elected officials and the public. Tools are needed for planners to
communicate the value of plans and urban developments that advance
sustainability, and for scientists to communicate the knowledge that will enable
planners, elected officials, and other local leaders in business and non-profit
organizations (e.g., land conservancies, neighborhood associations) to carry out
effective sustainable community design initiatives.
5. Publish best practice manuals. Publish manuals of best sustainable practices for
built environments describing successes, identifying best urban design,
communication, and engagement principles, and recommending practical
techniques. The manuals should be aimed at state, regional, and local levels to
help them reorient their practice to achieve sustainable communities.
Research Needs
The Built Environment Breakout Group recommended various possibilities for conducting
research to strengthen societal capability to support sustainable human settlements through
proactive planning and policy in five main areas.
1. Regional Land Use Change and Impact Assessment Modeling. Recent advances
in Internet-based tools provide unprecedented opportunities for public
participation, education, and scientifically informed planning and decision
making. The first generation of web-based resources offered static documents or
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information products. The next generation created mapping and visualization
tools to view landscapes (e.g., Google Earth), and to specify user-defined features.
Fully web-enabled analytical GIS packages, the third generation, are just now
becoming available. These tools offer visualize analyses of land use alternatives,
and make data, analyses and expertise accessible to all communities, especially
those with limited capability to anticipate and plan for change.
The proposed research would take advantage of these emerging but relatively
unexplored technologies to develop planning and impact assessment modeling.
The model should have the capability to identify, visualize, and predict the
impacts of alternative scenarios of future growth, and be easily accessible,
graphically represented, and interactive. It could include various interrelated
elements, including, for example:
• Base layer databases (e.g., natural resources, socio-economic
characteristics, hazards, public infrastructure, current land use, zoning
policy, traffic analysis zones) to serve as the foundation for land use and
impact models on which users could query data, customize maps, and
analyze “what if” scenarios of future growth;
• Multi-criteria analysis capabilities to identify the distribution of future
growth (including development in buffers around bases and training
corridors), hotspots of environmentally sensitive areas, polluted areas, and
natural hazard areas; and
• Scenario creation capabilities that permit specification of alternative
growth forecasts, land use change policies (local, regional, and state level),
local tax situations, and sustainability initiatives, and comparison of the
consequences of scenarios (e.g. loss of open spaces, vulnerability to
natural hazards, energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, housing
demands and supply, traffic congestion).
The model should be readily distributable via CDs and interactive Internet-based
programs. Local people should be able to view maps of their areas, create their
own maps to evaluate scenarios, and add their own data. Regional stakeholder
forums can be created to engage stakeholders in the proactive assessment of their
decisions, while using their input to further calibrate model scenarios.
2. Self-assessment tool to audit plans and ordinances. This instrument would be
designed to serve as a local/regional government self-assessment tool to track
how well local/regional government plans and ordinances (e.g., land use/building
code regulations and incentives, infrastructure investments) counter conventional
(or sprawl) development patterns and advance more sustainable patterns. The tool
could aid local officials to identify potential gaps, and assess the strengths and
weaknesses of how well plans and ordinances account for the sustainability
criteria. The tool could be applied, for example, to gauge progress in county and
municipal plans before compared to after the recent DoD sponsored regional
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planning initiatives in the Sandshills of south-central North Carolina and Eglin
AFB-Appachicola National Forest corridor in the Florida panhandle.
The criteria will be based on a comprehensive literature review in the emerging
field of sustainability sciences (e.g., see National Research Council publications,
EPA Smart Growth reports). Although every plan brings together a series of
choices designed to fit the unique needs of a particular community, the criteria
should be robust in order to determine the strength of any local/regional plan and
its implementation ordinances in supporting sustainable community design. The
intent is to help planners and policy makers to systematically think about how
facts, goals, and policies should be developed and integrated into a plan and
implementation programs.
3. Institutional performance assessment model. Metropolitan regions in the
Southeast are emerging as dominant economic units in a globalizing society. The
multiple networks of institutions that govern metropolitan regions make decisions
that exert significant impacts on regional institutional performance. While some
important scientific and technical work is being done to mitigate the adverse
societal impacts of urban development, much institutional change will be needed
to tie this knowledge to advance sustainable human settlements. Yet, after
decades of policy debate, little is known on how to create effective regional
partnerships and how such partnerships perform in achieving core regional goals
(e.g., more protected open spaces, reduced regional auto-dependency, revitalized
inner city economies).
The proposed research will develop an Institutional Performance Assessment
Model (IPAM) to assess the extent to which variants of regional partnership
building strategies (data sharing, visioning, formulating plans/policies, setting
priorities for action, funding) and organization reform strategies (consolidation of
municipal and county governments, privatization of infrastructure facilities and
services) have on the ability of metro governance institutions to deliver
sustainable urban development and infrastructure services. The research will
entail development of metrics to gauge the strength of institutional partnerships
across metro regions and performance outcomes to be integrated into the
performance assessment model. IPAM will help regional (and local) governing
institutions to measure, compare, and improve institutional designs that most
effectively build regional-scale partnerships that enable communities to take
collective action for mutual benefit.
4. Tracking and Early Warning Systems. A high priority concern for military bases
is the changing of land use patterns outside of the base boundaries and the
potential impacts of those changes on training, landscape ecosystems, and
community livability. Although historical changes in land use can be monitored
though remote sensing, this approach does not provide an early warning for base
managers to react to changes before or as they are occurring.
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This project would develop an automated “early warning” system for planned or
permitted changes in land use occurring in base buffers and corridors. The system
will rely on the Internet and other sources to compile publicly available
information about proposed changes in land use and provide that information to
base staff in a format that is geographically-linked, user-friendly, and readily
updatable. System capabilities will include continuous online mapping of
proposed changes in land use plans and zoning regulations, and permits for
proposed developments, and delivery of mapped and descriptive information
(type, size, density, of proposed developments) to base operators. Base operators
will be able to proactively act in ways they deem appropriate for a range of
proposed changes in plans and zoning ordinances, and throughout development
permit review processes.
5. Social marketing research. While the public rates many of the ills of sprawl like
traffic congestion, air pollution, loss of open spaces, and rising costs of public
infrastructure, they often reject many of the countermeasures used to control
sprawl. Neighborhoods often oppose compact, mixed use urban forms compared
to their perception of the more benign effects of conventional low density
developments (or sprawl). Developing and carrying out communication and
awareness building strategies about the consequences of personal and public
policy choices about future human settlement patterns has become a critical need.
This project would involve supporting a social marketing research initiative
focused on changing attitudes and behaviors in ways that mitigate the impact of
urban growth on humans and the natural and built environments in which they
live. It would draw on knowledge and techniques developed in the social
marketing field. This field has evolved from a one-dimensional reliance on public
service announcements to a more sophisticated approach which draws on theories
of risk communication and survey research techniques. Rather than dictating the
way that information is to be conveyed from the top-down, researchers would be
actively involved in guiding public agency professionals on how to listen to target
audiences, and building the program from there. This focus on the “consumer”
would involve in-depth research and constant re-evaluation of every aspect of the
research program.
6. Science and technology needs for green buildings and neighborhoods. In
designing the built infrastructure, both on and off military installations, there are
science and technology research needs for green or sustainable building and
neighborhood design and advanced technologies that reduce the impacts on the
environment. While significant research is being conducted in this area
(Architecture 2030), taking this concept one step further highlights the need for
technologies that enable the built environment to have a positive impact on the
environment. Research is needed for new technologies that eliminate solid, liquid
and gaseous wastes and that consume only recyclable or renewable resources,
both during design and construction as well as operation and maintenance, and
finally decommissioning of the buildings and infrastructure facilities, both for
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military-unique built environments and surrounding communities. There is a
need for carbon neutral and eventually carbon sequestering structures, structures
that produce rather than consume oxygen, and that produce high quality water
rather than sewage or polluted stormwater runoff.
In addition, there is a need for technologies that facilitate sustainable design of
new and retrofitting of existing neighborhoods, both on and off military
installations. The intent is to create neighborhoods that are less energy intensive,
have lower environmental impacts, promote higher density development and that
is as a system, more sustainable. These technologies should enable building new
and retrofitting existing neighborhoods and infrastructure systems to meet
Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for Neighborhood Development
(LEED-ND) or other green design certification requirements.
Literature Cited
Architecture 2030 -- http://www.architecture2030.org/case_studies/index.html
Beatley, T. 2007. Sustainable Cities in the Southeast U.S.: Trends and Future Directions in
Green Urbanism. In Southeast Regional Planning & Sustainability Workshop Report.
Department of Defense. [http://www.serdp-estcp.org/workshops/serps/docs/Sustainable
Cities in the Southeast Beatley.pdf]
Carellas, G., and R. Shanks. 2007. Challenges and Opportunities for the Military in the
Southeast. In Southeast Regional Planning & Sustainability Workshop Report.
Department of Defense. [http://www.serdp-estcp.org/workshops/serps/docs/Engaging
Academia_DoD Southeast.pdf]
Godschalk, D. 2007. Southeast Growth and Planning: Trends and Issues. In Southeast Regional
Planning & Sustainability Workshop Report. Department of Defense.
[http://www.serdp-estcp.org/workshops/serps/docs/Southeast Growth and Planning.pdf]
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MILITARY
Paul Friday
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Over the last 30-plus years, the military has gradually become more impacted by external forces
that may cause encumbrances and restrictions on military training and operations. These forces
are driven by many factors. First and foremost are the gradual and steady increases in
populations around and near military bases and training areas. Concurrently, the military has
evolved its doctrine and training thereby increasing its physical impact footprint (noise, safety
concerns, etc.) by extending the distances of its tactics and weapon systems. Increased nighttime
training also adds to the overall footprint. The result is a competition for air, land, water, and
frequency resources that is much greater than ever before and will continue to increase and
become more complex in the future.
The Military Working Group methodically reviewed the situation in the context of the military’s
past, present, and future. Many issues were discussed and the most pressing were further
addressed to identify solutions and recommendations. The issues in this paper are only a
representative sampling of the full scope of issues. The work group members felt it was
important to lay a foundation for more detailed future efforts to fully scope all problems and
issues and find comprehensive solution sets.
The Working Group issues are divided among three general categories. The first is a set of seven
issues that is organizational in nature and is referred to as “Internal to DoD.” The second set of
six issues is related to “Policy” and the last set of five issues is associated with
“Communications.” The Working Group also identified a preliminary set of solutions and
recommendations. The recommendations are categorized into three groups. The first is
“Strategy, Policy, and Planning” – this group of recommendations primarily addresses many of
the Internal DoD issues, such as the DoD needs to update and publish strategy and policy and
guidance on encroachment issues, outreach, weapons acquisition and develop best management
practices . The second set of recommendations is Communications – these recommendations
correlate to the communications issues, such as clarifying the sharing of information, training of
senior officers in encroachment issues, and understand the two-way impact of the economics of
the installation and the community. The last set of recommendations is entitled research and
though somewhat limited noted that more effort needs to be placed development of programs in
addition to SERDP and ESTCP that address social and economic issues in combination with the
environmental research being done..
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INTRODUCTION
According to the background paper, Challenges and Opportunities for the Military in the
Southeast, by George Carellas, former Chief of the DoD Southern Regional Environmental
Center, the Southeast is in the midst of rapid change. “Population growth; Increasing
urbanization; Traffic congestion; Growing inequalities; A struggling educational system; Water
wars; Declining air quality; Ecosystem degradation; An economy in transition; Increasing global
competition. These issues share several traits: they are spatial; they are not confined by political
boundaries; they affect future generations; and they are related to each other.” The Southeast is
experiencing unparalleled change with an anticipated 30–80% regional growth projected over the
next 50 years. An example is the city of Atlanta, which has exploded in population from 1
million people in the late 1950’s to 5 million in 2007, currently the fastest growing city in the
Nation. Within this regional projection is, according to Carellas and Shanks (2007), also the
“greatest realignment and relocation of military forces in our nation’s history.”
Carellas and Shanks (2007) observes that the military has always been afforded a large presence
and played a key role in the evolution of the Southeast, often referred to as being woven into the
fabric of the Southeast; a role that will become even more prevalent in the future. A large
number of military veterans are from “military-friendly” Southeastern states, which makes the
growth of military assets in the Southeast, coupled with the significant investment of existing
training ranges and infrastructure, even more understandable. DoD manages approximately 2.4
million acres of federal and state land in the Southeast, including national assets of exceptional
ecological value and biological diversity. Of 400 major DoD installations world-wide, 79 are
located in the Southeast. The Army is the largest stakeholder, managing approximately 58%, or
1.4 million acres, followed by the Air Force managing approximately 700,000 acres, the Marine
Corps with approximately 180,000 acres and the Navy with 120,000 acres. Additionally, the U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers is responsible for a significant amount of acreage, most of which is
associated with navigation and flood control projects.
Carellas and Shanks (2007) emphasized that while military lands represent only 3% of the
national federal land inventory, strong evidence shows an unexpectedly large proportion of
biodiversity on those lands. The Military Departments collectively report over 220 federally
listed species as confirmed residents or migrants through their lands, a good indicator of how
well the military takes care of ecosystems and why military lands often become islands of
biodiversity. A compelling example is Fort Bragg, which leads a model regional recovery effort
that combines conservation efforts on private and public lands that in 2006 successfully resulted
in a USFWS announcement that recovery goals were met for the Sandhills Recovery Population
(1 of 9 Primary Recovery Populations) for the red-cockaded woodpecker.
All four Services are undergoing a transformation. Shifting from a threat-based force to a
capabilities-based force to meet the challenges of the 21st century will help sustain the American
competitive advantage in warfare. Transformation is a continuing process with no end point,
meant to create or anticipate the future and to deal with the co-evolution of concepts, processes,
organizations and technology. Change in any one of these areas necessitates change in all.
Transformation is meant to create new competitive areas and new competencies and to identify,
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leverage and even create new underlying principles for the way things are done; transformation
is meant to identify and leverage new sources of power.
Carellas and Shanks (2007) highlighted the fact that new weapons systems and state-of-the-art
technology are important parts of DoD’s transformation. DoD is heavily engaged in addressing
the accompanying issues and opportunities, while planning for the future. As associated
functions and support-tails are further identified, military activities often have a more
pronounced effect than initially anticipated. From a military-community perspective, combined
growth aspects will cause serious strains on the regional/local ability to provide adequate
housing, schools, hospitals, recreational areas, fire protection, road networks, sewage treatment,
water distribution and general quality of life assets and maintain compatible land uses in the
process. Such topics have been highlighted by local and regional planners and have spurred the
military to strengthen its commitment to improve its interface with local planners and many
others. DoD also must continue to improve its internal natural resources management in order to
maximize the availability of training lands and yet be a good steward of its resources.
Through the years, many military installations have consistently gained national recognition as
leaders in the stewardship of public lands, which is proving invaluable in building trust. The
military has found ways to satisfy its military mission requirements, while maintaining a healthy
environment and a strong community. The military now faces the challenge of building upon its
own accomplishments and more fully integrating those stewardship values and practices within
the Southeast Region and at all installations. Such challenges will provide significant
opportunities to shape the future military in the Southeast, consequently, helping to shape the
region during this time of unparalleled growth.
ISSUES
Overview
The Department of Defense is challenged by many issues relating to encroachment and
sustainability associated with increased urban growth and the transformation of DoD’s forces.
The 2004 Defense Installations Strategic Plan provides the following definition of encroachment:
“Encroachment - Broadly defined, includes those outside factors that inhibit accomplishment of
necessary live training and testing. Instances of encroachment such as compliance with
escalating environmental legal statutes, competition for airspace and eroding DoD radio
frequency spectrum along with substantial urban growth around previously isolated ranges.”
DoD also recognizes that the military encroaches upon the local communities. The following
figure demonstrates the forces at work.
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Radio
Frequency
Needs
Noise
Generation
& Abatement
Endangered Species
and Provision of
Wildlife Habitat
Maritime
Needs
Cultural
Interests
on Military
Lands
Population
Encroachment
Military
Ability to Train Commercial
Airspace
Commercial
Development
Wilderness
Designations
Air Quality
Munitions
Constituents
Noise
Generation
& Abatement
Military
Airspace
Dust & Smoke
Mission
Realignment &
Consolidation
Radio
Frequency
Requirements
Need for
Water Alternative
Energy Sources
Light
Pollution
In 2000, DoD evaluated the potential impacts of encroachment on readiness and training. They
stated that encroachment problems arise from a variety of sources and influences and that among
DoD’s encroachment issues, the following were the most problematic:
• Incompatible Urban Growth • Air and Land Space
Restrictions
• Airborne Noise Impacts
• Cultural Resources Presence • Air Quality Management
Requirements
• Wetlands Restrictions
• Endangered Species and Critical
Habitat Protection
Requirements
• Unexploded Ordinance
(UXO) and Munitions
Presence
• Frequency Spectrum
Interference
• Maritime Sustainability Needs • Clean Water Act
Requirements
Encroachment is a long-term, growing concern to military readiness. “Urbanization,” the
continued population growth and economic development around military installations and
ranges, can create land/other resource demands or environmental restrictions that are
incompatible with current and future military operations and training requirements. Likewise,
new weapons systems and tactics can cause incompatibility with existing resource uses by
creating more noise and requiring larger training areas than in the past. Encroachment problems
arise from three primary sources:
• Conflicting incompatible uses both near and far from DoD installations that limit
training, low-level flying routes and target areas.
• Federal, state, regional, and local regulations that restrict the use of land, airspace,
water, and communications frequencies, including regulations designed to protect
human health and safety, biological resources, and cultural resources.
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• De facto designation of installations as “habitats of last resort” for threatened or
endangered species and third-party pressure to use installation land for recreation,
rights of way, potable water supplies, air- and water-quality mitigation programs
and similar uses.
By far, the major unifying cause in the three aforementioned encroachment sources is population
growth and urbanization.
Sprawl, commonly referred to as uncontrolled growth, affects everyone, not just DoD. Rapid and
unconstrained outward urban growth is quickly consuming living space. The major catalysts for
outward urbanization include: climate change, demographics, and politics. As sprawl increases,
the public will have to make significant investments in national, regional, and local infrastructure
such as primary and secondary roads, railroads, airports, energy transmission lines and pipelines,
and utilities. Concurrently, our natural resources and environment will continue to be strained.
Predictions are that by 2030, the U.S. may need to rebuild most of the infrastructure it currently
has (based on the data from 2000), including a 46% increase in need for new construction and an
88% increase in need for major replacement and reconstruction.
Encroachment – politically, economically, culturally, and environmentally – affects each Service
equally, yet each Service, and in some cases subordinate commands within a Service, deals with
encroachment issues and solutions differently. There is little consistency in identifying and
prioritizing problems and solutions among the Services. Likewise, there is little consistency
amongst outside communities and governments with regard to working with installations to find
solutions. An installation is often not considered an integral part of the community or state given
that its land, water, frequency and airspace aspects are viewed from the context of being inside a
federal fence line. Incompatible resource uses are occurring frequently outside of these fence
lines, requiring that the installations seek buffers between the installations and the communities
to stem the progress of urban growth and its negative consequences on mission sustainment.
Since 9-11, the perception is that many DoD installations have become more isolated and
therefore communications between them and the community is reduced. Reduced
communications exacerbate poor resource use planning around installation and range boundaries
thereby leading to more encroachment issues that may negatively impact mission sustainment.
The ongoing war on terrorism further complicates dealing with encroachment issues because the
leadership is focused on this endeavor at the expense of many domestic programs such as
encroachment, environmental, and natural resource management.
Throughout the Military Breakout Session, the aforementioned background discussions were
considered in identifying potential research issues that could be identified to prepare the research
and development communities for potential requirements. Numerous issues were identified and
discussed during the military session. They can be categorized as Internal to DoD, Policy
Considerations, and Communications:
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Internal to DoD
• Military leadership at multiple levels changes every two to three years. The
change in command leadership at the intermediate and installation levels is a
challenge for staff as well as state and community members. Each new
commander takes approximately six months to understand the installation and
state/communities’ interests, needs, and issues. Each new commander also has a
mission focus and desires to improve the installation’s mission capabilities prior
to his or her departure. Much knowledge is lost with each change of command.
Program continuity can be interrupted, and in some cases completely eliminated,
by the changes in command. Concurrently, state and community leadership also
changes, although at a slower rate than the military rate.
• The military feels it is unduly carrying the bio-diversity responsibility. This issue
is one of the most important throughout all of the Services, one which particularly
the Army and Marine Corps. Ground forces need physical land space to train on.
As the land space is constrained by regulatory restrictions, training and operations
are more difficult to meet training standards. The solution includes obtaining
interests in lands next to or near the installation to offset some of the internal
restrictions imposed by regulatory agencies. The challenge is finding the right
partners and the right willing land owners at the right time. Who is responsible
for this combination of actions? Is the range staff, or the natural resource, or the
real estate staffs responsible? Complicating the acquisition process is the
question of how much land is necessary. If it is not enough to obtain regulatory
relief, should it be purchased at all? Can purchases in combination with zoning
suffice? If so, who is in charge? How much can DoD afford? Land prices are
escalating while the funds available for acquisitions remain relatively small. Will
there be enough funds to effectively use this practice in the future? Lastly, with
growth comes other economic development opportunities; many communities
near and around military installations see opportunities to improve their tax base.
How can mutually beneficial, sustainable economic development be achieved?
• It is difficult to know what the future holds for a given region or installation.
Military doctrine and weapon systems are constantly evolving as the external
threat to America’s national security changes. Commanders cannot say with
certainty when they will need to change the way training is conducted nor when a
new weapon system will be integrated into the inventory. This is a challenge for
states and local communities who try to do land or other resource use planning on
a time continuum of 10 years or more. Developing comprehensive plans and
zoning ordinances are robust public processes that attempt to accommodate a
regions growth needs over the next 20 years. Concurrently, the market forces are
leading to development in the communities to accommodate current growth. If
the military cannot project its needs in a timely manner, community planning
cannot take it into consideration except without a lot of interruptions to its orderly
planning processes. Usually, this is not an effective means and does not generally
work well.
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• There is a need to research the social culture as it relates to resolving
encroachment issues. To solve problems, three conditions need to be present:
(1) common interests, (2) relationships, preferably a good relationship, and (3) a
process that promotes working together. DoD needs to better understand how to
measure relationships and improve them with local, regional, state, and multi-
state organizations as appropriate. Inherent in doing so requires that DoD better
understand who the stakeholders are and how they perceive DoD. For better
understanding stakeholders, attitudes need to be evaluated, especially in light of
the specific issues that are challenges.
• How are corridors defined and used to support the military mission and other
purposes? DoD trains in corridors, primarily by using them for low-level, high-
performance aircraft training. These corridors also can be used to support natural
systems and habitats. They are also parts of the greater landscape and can be
protected to provide for the visual environment. In some cases, this land can be
used for compatible land uses consistent with the noise environment and safety of
flight issues. And, how might these corridors co-exist with evolving economic
corridors?
• DoD does not grow range sustainment professionals. Although encroachment
issues have been in existence for decades, the DoD has not recognized a
professional job series to work these issues. Generally speaking, encroachment
issues are managed by different staffs with different perspectives. The list
includes but is not limited to Public Affairs, Environmental, Natural Resources,
Range Management, Airfield Management, and Master Planning. The one
exception is the Marine Corps which established Community Plans and Liaison
offices to work encroachment issues. Compounding the issue of developing a
professional series is the need for this person to be good at multiple skills such as
communications, facilitation, mediation, negotiation, and understanding multiple
business processes such as planning, legislative and regulatory affairs, military
training and operations and more.
• Many of the tools and best practices used by DoD are similar and overlapping.
On one hand, this is good because each tool should produce similar outcomes
when employed. On the other hand, the incentive to create new tools and
practices is not recognized. Accordingly, DoD over time becomes less effective
in protecting it mission capabilities.
Policy Considerations
• How is future growth and associated economic development accommodated? This
issue recognizes that growth will continue around military bases as well as within
the overall military operating areas. Mechanisms need to be developed that
accommodate the growth and associated economic development while
simultaneously protecting the installation’s mission capability. The mechanisms
may range from existing programs, such as purchasing real estate interests in
properties next to and near installation and range boundaries, to better
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understanding the institutional drives of development (such as local governance
and market forces that result in both compatible and incompatible land uses) to
prototyping efforts to establish regional compatible resource models (which
enable sustainable economic development).
• Encroachment is a multifaceted issue, although DoD tends to focus more on the
land aspects of encroachment through its current initiatives. There is an important
need to look at the regulatory aspects and their impacts as well. Environmental,
airspace, and frequency problems can impact mission as much as urban sprawl.
DoD has in the past tried to use changes in legislation to remedy some of the
regulatory impacts with mixed success. More emphasis needs to be placed on
these issues in the future as well.
• How should DoD implement encroachment planning? Encroachment equally
impacts DoD and its Service components yet there is little guidance on how to
cope with these problems. Each Service has, over the past few years, instituted
initiatives to better deal with their encroachment issues. A quick review of those
initiatives during the session reveals that there are some similarities but many
differences. The session members felt that a more unified approach might be
advantageous for the following reasons: (1) DoD could initiate a Planning,
Programming, Budgeting, and Execution System (PPBES) program to promote
the implementation of a formal DoD funding program, (2) individual Services
could leverage each others experiences to evolve more effective mechanisms to
deal with encroachment issues, and (3) communities in the vicinity of different
Service installations would see uniformity in their approach to solving
encroachment problems rather than dissimilarities that can be confusing to local
government officials and land owners.
• States do not have organizations or activities that are designed to deal with
military encroachment issues and similarly, DoD does not have the organizational
structure to interact with state authorities uniformly on these issues. DoD did
create Regional Environmental Coordinator (REC) offices to interface with the
ten EPA regions and the state environmental regulatory agencies within the EPA
region’s area. This improved information exchanges and facilitates problem
resolution at the installation and state level. This program is limited, however,
because the REC focus is primarily on environmental regulatory issues. DoD
needs to review the REC program in light of other organizational and program
delivery activities and consider its future role, as appropriate, to address the
aforementioned encroachment shortfalls. Conversely, the states need to recognize
the value of its military installations and consider establishing offices that can aid
the military in dealing with the myriad of regional and local resource use planning
and regulatory issues that encroach on the military’s ability to perform its
mission. Failure to do so may result in an installation’s closure in future BRAC
efforts. The military is a major economic force in most states and this loss can be
traumatic for the local communities where an installation has closed.
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• Who will cover the cost of collaboration? It is recognized that part of the
encroachment solutions will depend on DoD initiating collaboration, but who will
be responsible for developing the policy, plans, and training? Collaboration is a
long time process that cannot be started, stopped, and restarted again. Funding is
a major consideration that is not being addressed at the lower echelons within
DoD. With few exceptions, requests for funding at the local level cannot be
justified based on a policy and or a higher headquarters’ strategy or plans. In
addition, many tools will be needed to support the collaborative efforts; how will
they be identified and funded?
• How will critical habitat issues be addressed in the future? Will processes,
procedures, and programs be developed that bring to bear all appropriate resource
partners to collectively address this critical issue?
Communications
• There is a lack of understanding of the military mission. Most local, regional, and
state organizations do not realize the breadth and scope of military training and
operations that occur on its installations and ranges. Nor is there an appreciation
for why the military conducts training as it does – it fights as it trains.
Historically, local and regional communities have had access to the installations
and some of its services but, in many cases, they have not observed how the
military trains. In addition, the installations have been cooperative in working
with local communities on the communities’ needs for additional lands in terms of
transferring and or exchanging it to satisfy a community need. Many installations
cannot continue to do this due to potential losses in mission capabilities.
• Communication needs improving at all levels. This is true from many
perspectives. Communications between DoD and installations and their
counterpart organizations and communities are many times ineffective or lacking
on key issues. Communications between staffs whether inside DoD or local,
regional, and state organizations can be difficult since all of these organizations
are functionally organized and managed thereby making internal lateral
discussions and coordination difficult.
• There is a greater need to share information. This is a universal need if DoD is to
improve its ability to protect its missions. Most encroachment issues are
externally driven and therefore, most solutions lie with the external encroachment
source. Data, information, and knowledge must be shared with all through
multiple means to include information sharing, cooperating, coordinating, and in
many cases, collaboration. Some of this must occur through established
regulatory process such as issues related to the environment and local planning
and much more can occur through establishment of informal and formal
relationships. In all cases, it needs to be accurate and timely.
• How is it demonstrated that it is in the interest of all to support the military
interests of the military’s installations and ranges? First and foremost, DoD needs
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to establish engagement and outreach activities that are based on policy and
implemented through formal training programs. Secondly, DoD’s messages need
to be clear, honest, and timely. Third, DoD needs to find best practices that give
communities and land owners incentives to work with DoD. Fourth, the subject
matter needs to be relevant to both the military and the communities; otherwise,
the issue may be interpreted as self-serving.
• Changing demographics around and near military installations will continue to
present challenges. As communities grow and their economies diversify over
time, the community’s interests in the installation tend to wane and place less
emphasis on the installation’s value to the community. Given these changing
circumstances, DoD must find ways to maintain and sustain the community’s
interest in the installation’s mission. Again, it is important that DoD establish
outreach and engagement initiatives at all levels – national, regional, state, and
local. Inherent in this issue is the need to better understand the installation’s
economic value. This means that DoD needs to move from a passive player in the
market place to one that influences and supports the market place to the
betterment of the states, communities and itself.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Given the above issue discussions, a range of potential solutions were discussed.
Strategy, Policy, and Planning Needs
1. DoD needs to publish strategy and policy on the following topics:
• Encroachment planning. This guidance needs to address program funding,
program metrics, and information and planning requirements to include
organizational responsibilities throughout the Services and DoD’s chain of
command.
• Conducting outreach and engagement. This guidance needs to address
what DoD expects all echelons to do concerning outreach and engagement
and who is responsible for such requirements.
• Encroachment planning in a joint service context. This guidance needs to
address new joint bases policy on dealing with encroachment and for
situations where local stakeholders need to work with multiple Services.
2. Update existing policy and guidance on the following topics:
• Weapon system acquisition. An updated policy needs to better address the
issue of how, when and where a system will be fielded in order to better
communicate the impacts for local land and other resource use
coordination actions.
• REC operations to include identifying and establishing multi-state
initiatives in collaboration with community plans and liaison functions
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• Better articulate the role of Public Affairs, business/contracting offices,
etc. in encroachment planning.
3. DoD needs to publish supporting guidance and programs for the following
topics:
• Developing personnel skills and training requirements for professional
staff working encroachment issues.
• Documenting best practices and case studies that support the best
practices.
• Publishing “How To” documents as appropriate.
• Establishing “Compatible Land/Resource Use Guidelines” to be used with
states and local communities.
• Develop guidance on how to better deal with regulatory encroachment.
Earlier efforts focused on changing legislation with mixed results. Future
efforts need to focus on improved management efforts such as preventing
pollution and working with regulators concerning the interpretation and
application of regulations.
Communications
1. DoD needs to clarify what information installations and ranges can share with the
public as it relates to land use planning and future military operations.
2. DoD needs to encourage the inclusion of encroachment training in the DoD
sponsored general officers training program for new O-7 officers as well as in the
Services’ installation and range commanders courses.
3. DoD needs to publish case studies that identify the good and challenging aspects
of conducting outreach and engagement activities. The case studies should
address lessons learned to aid new commanders in taking over positions that
involve significant levels of community involvement.
4. DoD needs to establish ad hoc training programs for conducting effective
outreach and engagement activities as well as forums for engaging in real life
encroachment problem solving until such time the training can be incorporated
into Service schools and activities.
5. DoD needs to establish a DoD Outreach and Engagement Strategy and Plans to
guide the Services overall community involvement actions.
6. DoD needs to continue to promote the Marine Corps Community Plans and
Liaison functions for all Services and establish a DoD Public Affairs Plan to
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ensure the messages are consistent among the Services and are delivered to all the
needed audiences in a form the many audiences will understand.
7. DoD needs to better understand all of the interests and attitudes of potential
stakeholders involved in encroachment issues.
8. DoD needs to better understand the economic and market forces that effect local
land use development – this includes understanding incentives, land costs,
property ownership issues, and market forces.
9. DoD needs to enhance its current multi-state initiatives in the Southeast and
Southwest to explore opportunities to support “living laboratories” for testing and
evaluating encroachment mitigation, outreach, and engagement activities. It is
suggested that additional dedicated resources be applied to these efforts to
supplement the Services programs and experiences. This can also be used as a
forum for testing the establishment of state organizations that can better interface
with the DoD.
Research
1. Natural resources and endangered species in particular are significant
encroachment issues. The current SERDP/ESTCP research agenda is an adequate
beginning but this research needs to be increased proportional to the amount of
mission and training degradation that is occurring due to increasing numbers of
acres being restricted from training. There is an increasing interest in looking at
corridors for both training and providing habitat for plant and animal species as
well as determining how to best integrate these with the concept of sustainable
economic development. SERDP/ESTCP also needs to assess how it might best
formulate activities addressing marine/coastal encroachment challenges.
2. Understanding the social and economic relationships between the military and
multi-state, state, regional, and local communities is critical to resolving current
and future encroachment issues. Current SERDP/ESTCP research programs do
not address these issues. This kind of research is performed in other parts of DoD
but has not, to the best of the participant’s knowledge, viewed its research in the
context of encroachment. It is recommended that the additional DoD research
organizations be included in future encroachment discussions.
3. Consideration needs to be given to the creation of multidisciplinary research
teams (built communities, environment, agriculture, forestry, economics, social
sciences, etc) to interface directly and participate actively within ongoing
SERPPAS projects which are of sufficient scale to utilize system approaches,
large enough to make a substantial difference, and which are designed to be
adoptable elsewhere.
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Literature Cited
Carellas, G., and R. Shanks. 2007. Challenges and Opportunities for the Military in the
Southeast. In Southeast Regional Planning & Sustainability Workshop Report.
Department of Defense. [http://www.serdp-estcp.org/workshops/serps/docs/Engaging
Academia_DoD Southeast.pdf]
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CONCLUSION
DoD looks forward to working with the workshop participants and others to further review, and
where possible advance, the recommendations contained in this Report. The recommendations
cover a breadth of sustainability topics and reflect the hard work of the workshop steering
committee, the workshop chair (Phil Berke), and the breakout group chairs. Whether about
research, policy, or outreach; whether requiring short-term or long-term changes; whether
Southeast-specific or national in scope, these proposals deserve – and will receive – close
attention.
Since the workshop, DoD and its partners have already begun to implement some of these
recommendations. One major recommendation resulting from the workshop was to engage
formally the academic community with SERPPAS efforts through the existing Cooperative
Ecosystem Studies Unit (CESU) network of federal and university partners. In furtherance of
this recommendation, on October 25, 2007, SERPPAS signed a Memorandum of Partnership
(MOP) with the Gulf Coast and Piedmont South Atlantic CESUs to collectively work in
addressing land sustainability issues within the SERPPAS region. A SERPPAS-CESU Advisory
Team is currently developing a strategic plan to (1) identify a mechanism for soliciting research
proposals, (2) develop a research agenda relative to SERPPAS needs, and (3) identify funding
sources to support research projects each year.
Similarly, since the SERPS workshop, SERDP and ESTCP have continued to fund a number of
ongoing as well as FY2008 New Start projects that are addressing sustainability issues in the
Southeast including the launch of the Defense Coastal / Estuarine Research Program (DCERP) at
Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune (see www.serdp.org and www.estcp.org for information on
specific projects). In addition, SERDP issued a solicitation for research to be funded in FY2009
that includes topics of interest to those dealing with sustainability issues in the southeastern U.S.
Specifically, a Statement of Need (SON) was issued for proposals to assess the impact of sea
level rise on military infrastructure, an issue of concern for coastal installations in the Southeast.
Three additional FY2009 SONs that were based on the results of a workshop on threatened,
endangered, and at-risk species in the southeastern U.S., are requesting proposals in the
following topic areas: 1) Development of Science-Based Recovery Objectives for Ecological
Systems in the Southeastern United States; 2) Managing and Restoring Southeast Coastal
Ecosystems Under the Threat of Climate Change; and 3) Accelerated Pine Forest Mortality in the
Southeastern United States. Finally, SERDP is working to develop a framework for
sustainability assessments that could potentially assist sustainability efforts for other military
installations in the SE.
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APPENDICES
Workshop Agenda
Workshop Participants
Workshop Steering Committee
Workshop Read-Ahead Papers
Overview on Sustainable Ranges Initiative
Overview on SERPPAS
Overview on SERDP
Overview on ESTCP
SERPPAS-CESU Memorandum of Partnership
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DoD Workshop on Southeast Regional
Planning & Sustainability
AGENDA
Southeast Regional Planning &
Sustainability Workshop
April 25-27, 2007
Atlanta
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
7:45 – 8:30 Registration/Continental Breakfast
8:30 General Session: Welcome and Introduction to the Workshop
• Facilitator: Lewis Michaelson
• Workshop Purpose/Overall Agenda - Bradley Smith, DoD Strategic
Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP)
• Bruce Beard, DoD Sustainable Ranges Initiative (SRI)
• Overview of SRI - Bruce Beard
• Overview of SERDP/ESTCP - Bradley Smith
• Background on 2006 DoD Academic Session - Jonathan Weiss, SRS
Technologies and George Washington University
• Current Workshop Overarching Goals and Potential Outcomes - Philip Berke,
University of North Carolina
9:45 Major Sustainability and Regional Growth Trends in the Southeast
a) Growth and planning trends
b) Military realignment, community/regional planning initiatives, and SERPPAS
10:50 Break
11:05 Breakout Groups, Process, and Five Core Areas:
Overview and introduction of key breakout themes. Introduction of and brief remarks
by breakout chairs:
• Built Space - Philip Berke
• Military - Paul Friday, Marine Corps
• Agriculture - Robert Brown, North Carolina State University
• Forest - Neal Wilkins, Texas A & M University
• Land Corridors - Michael Elliott, Georgia Institute of Technology
Questions and Discussion
12:00 Lunch - Not Provided By Workshop - (hotel restaurant available)
1:15 First Set of Breakout Groups on Issues Identification
3:00 Break
3:15 Continue Breakout Groups
5:00 Adjourn
5:10 Reception – light hors d’eouvres (and cash bar)
Dinner on your own
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Thursday, April 26, 2007
8:15 Continental Breakfast
9:00 General Session: Report out by Chairs on Breakout Groups and Questions
Report outs by Chairs
Discussion on major identified issues and cross-cutting topics
10:40 Break
11:00 Panel on Innovative Southeast Collaborative Initiatives
Moderator: Chris Russo, State of North Carolina
• Florida Greenway and Eglin Air Force Base
Jesse Borthwick, Eglin AFB
• Sustainable Sandhills and Fort Bragg
Jon Parsons, Sustainable Sandhills
12:30 Working Lunch
1:30 Overview of Second Set of Breakout Groups
1:45 Second Set of Breakout Groups on Solutions and Collaborative Approaches
3:00 Break
3:15 Continue Breakout Groups
4:30 General Session: Status Report and evening activity options
5:00 Adjourn
Evening Dinner on your own (suggested activities provided)
Friday, April 27, 2007
7:45 Continental Breakfast
8:30 General Session: Report out by Breakout Chairs and Themes/Progress Group
Discussion Emerging Themes and Potential Opportunities
10:15 Break
10:30 Continue Group Discussion on Emerging Themes and Potential Opportunities
11:30 Wrap up (summary and Next Steps) - Berke, Smith, and Beard
12:00 Adjourn
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Workshop Participants
Jeff Allen Clemson University
Spencer Banzhaf Georgia State University
Bob Barnes The Nature Conservancy
Bryan Barnhouse ICMA
Doug Bachtel University of Georgia
Bruce Beard Department of Defense
Tim Beatley University of Virginia
Lionel “Bo” Beaulieu Southern Rural Development Center
Gary Belew Army Environmental Command
Phil Berke University of North Carolina
Jesse Borthwick 46th Test Wing - Eglin AFB
John Brent Fort Benning
David Brentzel AFCEE
Robert Brown North Carolina State University
Stuart Cannon US Army Forces Command
George Carellas Dep. Asst. Secty. of the Army (ESOH)
Lawrence Carlile Fort Stewart
Ben Changkakoti Pima County AZ
Charles Clarkson The Clarkson Group
Gerry Cohn American Farmland Trust
Virginia Dale Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Camille Destafney Navy Region Southeast
Kelly Dickson NOAA Coastal Services Center
Cliff Duke Ecological Society of America
Mark Dunning Marstel-Day Consultants
Michael Elliott Georgia Institute of Technology
Kirk Emerson USIECR
Samuel Figuli HydroGeoLogic, Inc.
Paul Friday U.S. Marine Corps
Dean Gjerstad Auburn University
David Godschalk University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill B61
William Goran Army Corps of Eng. ERDC-CERL
Thomas Gunther U.S. Geological Survey
David Guynn Clemson University
John Hall SERDP/ESTCP
Thomas Heffernan 46th Test Wing - Eglin AFB
Tom Hoctor GeoPlan Center - University of Florida
Robert Holst HydroGeoLogic, Inc.
Alice Howard Marine Corps Air Station, Beaufort
James Huber Marstel-Day Consultants
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Workshop Participants (continued)
David Hughes Clemson University
Rick Jones Columbus Consolidated Government
Deborah Keller The Nature Conservancy
Stephanie Kline Mantech SRS Technologies, Inc.
Michael La Duc SAIC
Roel Lopez Texas A&M University
Rose-Ann Lynch Marstel-Day Consultants
Mike Mastrangelo Center for Sustainable Development
Wayne Masur Forest Capital Partners, LLC.
Tad McCall Army Environmental Policy Institute
Tara McGrath Coastal Conservation League
Susan McIntyre North Carolina State University
Manette Messenger U.S. Army IMA Southeast Regional Office
Lewis Michaelson Katz & Associates
Christine Olsenius Southeast Watershed Forum
Jon Parsons Sustainable Sandhills
John Richardson U.S. EPA Region 4
Linda Rimer U.S. EPA
Michael Rosenzweig University of Arizona
John Rupnik HydroGeoLogic, Inc.
Chris Russo North Carolina Dept. of Environment & Natural Resources
Alicia Shepherd HydroGeoLogic, Inc.
Rick Sinclair U.S. Army IMCOM Southeast
Brad Smith SERDP/ESTCP
Mark Smith United States Military Academy West Point
Jim Sweeney University of Georgia
Phil Trader Economic Development Administration
Jim Van Ness DoD Office of General Counsel
Geoff Wang Economic Development Administration
David Wear U.S. Forest Service
Jonathan Weiss ManTech SRS Technologies, Inc.
Allison Welde SFI, Inc.
Summer Wilkes Marstel-Day Consultants
Neal Wilkins Texas A&M University
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Steering Committee Members
Robert Becker Clemson University
John Bergstrom University of Georgia
Philip Berke University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Michael Elliott Georgia Institute of Technology
Gerrit Knaap University of Maryland
Michael Rosenzweig University of Arizona
R. Neal Wilkins Texas A&M University
Marybeth Brenner New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and
Environmental Commission of States
Charles Clarkson The Clarkson Group
Paul Friday USMC Installations East
Manette Messenger US Army Installation Management Agency Southeast
John Wiens The Nature Conservancy
Larry Wiseman American Forest Foundation
Bruce Beard DoD – Sustainable Ranges Initiative
Brad Smith DoD -- SERDP/ESTCP
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Workshop Read-Ahead Papers
(Adobe Acrobat Reader required)
These background papers were prepared by experts in advance of the workshop for distribution
to workshop attendees. They are available on-line on the workshop website at http://www.serdp-
estcp.org/workshops/serps.
Southeast Agriculture: Trends and Issues
Gerry Cohn, Southeast States Director, American Farmland Trust
Land Corridors in the Southeast: Connectivity to Protect Biodiversity and Ecosystem
Services
Thomas S. Hoctor (University of Florida-GeoPlan Center), Will L. Allen, III, Margaret H. Carr,
Paul D. Zwick, Ellen Huntley, Daniel J. Smith, David S. Maehr, Ramesh Buch, and Richard
Hilsenbeck
Trends in Southeastern Forests
David N. Wear, USDA Forest Service
Sustainable Cities in the Southeast U.S.: Trends and Future Directions in Green Urbanism
Timothy Beatley, University of Virginia
Trends in Our Military Land Use Patterns
George Carellas, US Army Southern Regional Environmental Coordinator
General Papers
So What is This Thing Called Sustainability
Manette Messenger, US Army IMCOM Southeast
Southeast Growth and Planning: Trends and Issues
David R. Godschalk FAICP, Department of City and Regional Planning University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill
Tools for Managing Urban Encroachment on Military Bases
Gerrit-Jan Knaap and Jason Eversole, National Center for Smart Growth, University of
Maryland, and Jeff Allen, The Strom Thurmond Institute, Clemson University
Southeast Regional Sustainability Partnerships
Alison Dalsimer, HGL
Southeastern Regional Conservation Research Projects
Robert Holst, HGL
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Sustainable Ranges Initiative
The Department of Defense (DoD) Sustainable Ranges Initiative (SRI) works to ensure the long-
term viability and continuity of military installations, including training and testing ranges, while
providing good stewardship of the land. Key to the Initiative has been working with outside
stakeholders to develop a framework of compatible land use efforts, coordinated regional
planning, and community partnerships.
The SRI has assumed major importance to DoD in the face of the growing challenge posed by
unchecked urban sprawl and other encroachment pressures on military training and readiness.
Effects of urban sprawl include:
• Impairment of night vision training due to light from nearby development
• Loss of habitat for endangered species, often making military lands the “last refuge” for
imperiled species fleeing development
• Restrictions on flying hours and routes due to increased noise complaints form new
neighbors
An invaluable component of DoD’s sustainable ranges effort is supporting land protection and
sound planning through efforts such as the Readiness and Environmental Protection Initiative
(REPI). The DoD REPI Program provides funding to the military services to assist their
installations in working with state and local governments or non-governmental organizations to
acquire conservation easements from willing sellers. The REPI program, launched in 2004, has
already led to more than two dozen conservation buffer projects across the country, securing
more than 60,000 acres of valuable buffer lands.
More information on the Initiative is available at
www.denix.osd.mil/denix/Public/Library/Sustain/Ranges/sustainableranges.html
SERPPAS
As part of DoD’s Sustainable Ranges Initiative, the Department has increasingly emphasized
partnerships between military services and across state boundaries. The Southeast represents a
challenging opportunity for sustainability planning, given the tremendous economic and
population growth taking place in the region. Moreover, base realignment will lead to
increased personnel and activities at a number of Southeast bases.
In view of these challenges and the need to think across boundaries, DoD has entered into the
Southeast Regional Partnership for Planning and Sustainability (SERPPAS). This pilot effort,
which involves several Southeast states (North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and
Alabama) and other stakeholders, promotes a working regional partnership designed to mutually
benefit the military and the natural and working landscapes in the region. SERPPAS is
developing focused collaborative projects to address shared regional issues.
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SERDP
The Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP) is the Department of
Defense’s (DoD) environmental science and technology program, planned and executed in full
partnership with the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency, with
participation by numerous other federal and non-federal organizations. To address the highest
priority issues confronting the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines, SERDP focuses on cross-
service requirements and pursues high-risk/high-payoff solutions to the Department’s most
intractable environmental problems. The development and application of innovative
environmental technologies support the long-term sustainability of DoD’s training and testing
ranges as well as significantly reduce current and future environmental liabilities.
ESTCP
The Environmental Security Technology Certification Program (ESTCP) is a Department of
Defense (DoD) program that promotes innovative, cost-effective environmental technologies
through demonstration and validation at DoD sites.
The Environmental Security Technology Certification Program’s goal is to demonstrate and
validate promising, innovative technologies that target the most urgent environmental needs of
the Department of Defense (DoD). These technologies provide a return on investment through
cost savings and improved efficiency. The current cost of environmental remediation and
regulatory compliance in the Department is significant. Innovative technology offers the
opportunity to reduce costs and environmental risks. ESTCP offers funding in the following four
focus areas: Environmental Restoration, Munitions Management, Sustainable Infrastructure,
and Weapons Systems and Platforms.
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