This model employs an eco-balancing decision feedback system (metalevel overlay to conventional GIS methods) to make sustainable land management, use, and planning decisions. With its metalevel overlay approach, the proposed model includes life-cycle based data-maps (incident radiation, biomass, and so on), productive potential maps (potential for production of food, energy, clean air, material resources, and so on), and eco-balancing methods (balancing upstream and downstream productive potential) to facilitate sustainable decisions. It includes a feedback system of ecological baselines, desired performance benchmarks, and environmental monitoring of sustainability indicators to assess the degree to which solutions are trajecting, over time, toward performance benchmarks. This eco-balancing design model was proposed as an information-flow system of eco-balancing design, environmental monitoring, and comparison of environmental performance in relation to benchmarks—as a process for confirming the efficacy and desired evolution of planning and design decisions to promote sustainability.
Eco-balancing design model Download as PDF (65kb)
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