Land management decision making tools for environment and community

Description

As various carbon calculators and biodiversity tools develop in sophistication, this webinar presents the development behind an integrated land use decision making tool and how land management is involving technology to make decisions which consider both the environment and community.

An introduction from Kerry Waylen, Senior Researcher at James Hutton Institute provided an insight to the policy context. Leo Peskett, Assistant Professor at Heriot-Watt University presented the findings from his recent publication on natural capital assessment in landscape-scale land use planning. For a full list of the resources discussed in this webinar please visit the accompanying article.

The development of new tools to integrate the many different trade-offs of land management and nature finance, this webinar presents the role of innovative tools to help cut through the complexity of the diverse benefits which flow from ecosystems. Including insight into the consequences of land management, what we can reasonably expect to predict with such tools, and where there may be important unknowns or uncertainties.

Rethink Carbon originated as part of the CivTech challenge 2022 and are partnered with the John Muir Trust, Langholm Initiative, South of Scotland Enterprise and Southern Uplands Partnership. 

The past year the team have been creating a tool designed to enhance land use decisions in Scotland by providing automated, collaborative and science-based platform to help land managers identify areas to restore nature, revenue streams opportunities and engage with local communities. The tool includes dataset analysis that provides a natural capital baseline, presenting key aspects about the existing land use, soils, habitats, biodiversity and identifying eligible grants.

This webinar to explore the requirement for land management tools, how Rethink has been created and the importance decision making aspects of land management in Scotland. The responses to the unanswered Q&A are available here.