National Capital Region Atlas

National Capital Region Atlas
April 13, 2005

A proposal to develop an actual and virtual atlas of the National Capital Region of Washington, DC, Maryland, and northern Virginia, with a focus on the region’s natural and cultural landscapes and their links to the quality of life of the people who live and work in this region.

Synopsis: This initiative seeks to increase the appreciation and understanding of the people, enterprises and landscapes of the metropolitan region to demonstrate their relevance and interrelationships to public policy and landscape management. It does so through the design of information-based networks that link the region’s inherent assets – its economic capital, its social capital, and its natural systems, in order to provide new knowledge to inspire fresh approaches for land study, decision-making, and management. The essential connections that this proposal seeks to make are illustrated in figure 1.


The Problem and the Opportunity


Once considered a quaint backwater, Washington, DC has established itself as the vibrant capitol of the most powerful nation on earth. The center of government for some 200 years, the greater Washington, DC metropolitan area has more recently expanded into a center for commerce and industry. The combination of government and a healthy economy now make the National Capital Region one of the fastest growing metropolitan areas in the United States. By 2030, the population in the region is projected to grow to 7.5 million, or by approximately 2 million residents. Regional employment is projected to increase by 46 percent from 2000 to 2030, for a gain of 1.6 million jobs.

New residents are attracted not only by jobs but also by the area’s reputation for a high quality of life. The area’s natural and cultural landscapes are key to this quality of life. With the Potomac River serving as its structural backbone, the region possesses a wealth of significant natural and built landscapes, natural resource features, and nationally significant historical and cultural sites.

Yet, the region’s open space is being consumed at an unprecedented rate, forever changing bucolic agricultural landscapes, and threatening important natural and cultural features. For example, the Region is consuming land at a faster rate than population growth. From 1982 to 1997 the region's population grew by 30% and the land developed to accommodate that growth increased by 47%. Loudoun County, Virginia is currently the second fastest growing county in the United States. In 2004 the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments’ Metropolitan Washington Green Infrastructure Demonstration Project revealed that metropolitan Washington, DC will continue to lose 28 to 43 acres of open space everyday until 2020.

It is not too late to ensure that the region’s natural and cultural character can retain their integrity for the use and enjoyment of future generations, but time is running out. Cities, towns, counties, and the states each must play a role if growth is to be managed and important urban, rural, and natural landscapes are to be preserved. No one entity can make this happen alone. It will take a true region-wide effort.

Although the metropolitan region has a strong tradition of inter-governmental cooperation, and nearly 400 agreements have been struck covering a range of functions and services, there is an overall lack of integration between these efforts. Various technical, social, environmental, economic, recreation, transportation, safety, and other agreements are often single purpose and linear and fail to seek solutions that emphasize the connectivity, interdependence, and mutuality between the different efforts.

The proposed project recognizes that a shift is required away from conventional site-by-site problem solving and decision-making approaches toward those that place individual actions within the context of the larger region and the quality of life of those who live within the region. Having a sense of the region and an appreciation for factors affecting quality of life, decision makers at the local, state, and national levels can begin to take actions that will insure that the National Capital Region remains one of the world’s premier metropolitan and national capital regions.

Objectives

1. Contribute to the creation of a visual image of a sustainable region that can be understood and embraced by residents and decision-makers.

2. Increase appreciation of economic, social, and natural values and their interrelationships, interdependency, and mutuality within the region.

3. Engage citizens in shaping the future quality of life of the region.

4. Encourage innovative solutions to growth issues and increase public acceptance of these innovative solutions.

5. Create networks of leaders, and of information systems, to ask – and to answer -- the right questions at the right time about the future of the region and the implications that this future will have on quality of life.

6. Increase the capability of private sector and public sector decision makers, and the people who live in this region, to better understand the ramifications of land use and other development decisions on quality of life at a variety of scales, from the micro to the entire region and beyond.

7. Identify windows of opportunity arising from the coexistence of different social, political and commercial interests in alternative forms of landscape management.

The Proposal in Brief

This proposal is to create an atlas of useful and accessible environmental information, both hard copy and electronic, that provides links between the region, its people, its economy, and its natural and cultural environment. The atlas will be based on a common geographical framework, that is, the National Capital Region. Within this geographical framework information will be provided on a variety of landscape themes and at a variety of scales. The key benefit is that, for the first time, information will be made available throughout the region using comparable terms. Information will be multi-scaled and multi-layered, and there will be an opportunity to interact with this information. The net result is that public attention will be focused on the region and its inherent qualities, and decisions at the local level will be will better informed.

Applications

The atlas and information system would not focus on any one application, but will be crafted so as to be applicable to many uses at a variety of scales. The products will be useful for a variety of educational purposes, from public awareness to schools and universities. Products will be useful to engineers, land use planners, and others involved in development of the region, especially those who wish to place their specific activities and interests within a broader regional and multi-interest context. The information will also be useful to decision-making entities, be they private companies or local, county, state, or federal governments.

The information produced through this initiative, and the creative problem solving that it will generate, could also be used to demonstrate a transferable approach for other areas to use. The problems faced by the National Capital Region are not unique. Confronted with growing development pressures, many metropolitan areas in the United States are struggling to forge a regional identity, conserve important resources, and maintain a high quality of life. Given its stature and visibility, the National Capital Region is poised to be a model for such areas. Due to the global leadership position of the United State, there also is the opportunity to make this an exemplary project for other national capitals experiencing rapid growth.

Partners

The National Park Service, National Capital Region will sponsor this initiative, working with public and private partners and with professionals skilled in information systems and regional resource planning. NPS will draw upon skills, information, and networks from partners such as the Center for Urban Ecology, the Chesapeake Watershed Cooperative Ecosystem Study Unit, the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, the Chesapeake Bay Program, the Trust for Public Land, other national and regional DC-based non-profit land conservation, economic and social organizations, and others. The core team consists of the NPS Assistant Regional Director for partnerships, and a team of experienced regional resource planning and information system specialists.

Defining the Region

Creating a sense of the region is vital to the success of any landscape-level initiative. The region provides a sense of place and a context within which to make local decisions. Defining a region is, however, not an easy task. We view the region as being a mosaic of natural, social, and economic landscapes. The lower Potomac River Basin serves as the region’s essential defining feature and building block. Overlain on this are the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments service area and other lands identified as urbanized by the U.S. Census. This region, depicted on the cover of this proposal, covers 5,363 square miles. At the region’s core is a major urban area comprised of 18 major units of local government clustered around Washington, DC. While this urban core is often the focus of attention, outside of this core are a wide variety of natural landscapes and upwards of 200 smaller cities, towns, and settlements.

Tasks

This project, which is envisioned to take 18-24 months to complete, will include the following tasks:

1. Identify key information themes that can serve as critical indicators of environmental change, growth and quality of life. The focus of these themes will be natural and cultural landscapes and their relationship to economic and social capital.

The themes selected must respond to the specific character and needs of the National Capital Region. However, the Atlas of the Irish Rural Landscape, prepared by Cork University Press in Cork, Ireland, provides an excellent example of the concept. The table of contents for that atlas includes:

Making the Irish Landscape
Early landscapes
Modern landscapes
Components of the Irish landscape
History
Archeology
Monuments
Woodlands
(Among many others)
Challenges of Change
Contemporary challenges
Management of land
Case studies

Examples of themes that could be considered for the National Capital atlas are:


Forest landscapes
Agriculture landscapes
Special geologic/ecological features
Archeology
Cultural landscapes
Historic landscapes, sites, buildings
Open spaces
Aquatic areas (rivers, lakes, wetlands)
River corridors
Landforms
Natural landscapes and areas
Wildlife habitats and corridors Groundwater recharge areas
Demographic changes
Economic infrastructure
Land use changes
Transportation corridors
Built and buildable lands
Hazardous waste sites
Public lands
Reserves and protected lands
Outdoor recreation opportunities
Urban parks, playgrounds, play fields
Water access

2. Identify existing public and private organizations and governments with the greatest knowledge of and information on these identified themes to be solicited as partners and sources of applicable written and spatial information.

3. Compile available spatial information for the region related to key themes in ways that relate these data to emerging scientific principles and disciplines applicable to regional and metropolitan decision-making, including landscape ecology, technological and social networks, human ecology, and sustainability.

5. Hold theme-specific public forums throughout the region to share information on the themes, to gain a better understand community issues and decision-making needs related to these themes, and to increase public awareness of these themes.

6. Display information in a variety of paper and electronic formats in ways that are easily accessible, interesting, and evocative.

7. Provide interactive opportunities to project the effects of decision-making on the region’s resource base and promote a more rational sustainable consumption pattern through information, sharing best practice guidance, and local community action.

Products

1. A set of theme-specific electronic products, including maps, photos, drawings, and narratives that can be used independently or in combination. (By focusing initially on a series of independent theme-specific products, useable products will be made available early in the project. This will both provide useful information to the public and create awareness of and anticipation for future products on other themes.)

2. A high-quality, application-oriented paper atlas of the National Capital Region that emphasizes key natural and cultural landscape themes and that relates these to economic and social capital at a variety of scales from local to regional. (Whether this should be a hardcover “coffee table” product or a more readily available soft-cover source manual is to be determined, but the essential objective is to make it available in a format that is convenient to those who will make use of it for educational and decision-making purposes.)

3. A companion state-of-the art Internet-based information system that (a) makes information at a variety of scales readily available for use for a variety of applications by engineers, investors, researchers, local and county government, financers, managers, regional planners, and the general public, and (b) allows interactive use of information in ways that inform the public and provide a basis for improved decision-making.

Schedule

Full implementation will take eighteen and twenty-four months. However, the project will focus on one information theme at a time, with products delivered sequentially, the first in a matter of a few months. As a result, the Internet-based delivery system will evolve over time, with most of the themes posted within one year, and a fully functioning, explorable information system completed within fourteen to eighteen months. The paper version of the atlas will be prepared following completion of the electronic version and will be available within eighteen to twenty-four months.

Why this Project?

The proposal advocates that new economic, social and environmental management skills and information are needed to shape the future of the region. Emphasis will be placed on providing public access to integrated qualitative and quantitative information, organizing community leader and expert networks, holding thematic technical and social public forums, and fostering of innovative best management practices. Collectively these activities will help decision-makers—at all levels of the government and private sector, better respond to changing circumstances, achieve multiple objectives simultaneously and ensure the region’s capacity to sustain and improve its quality of life.

Why Now?

The metropolitan Washington, DC region is experiencing a number of issues that hinder future development and the quality of life for residents, the business community and living resources. The Potomac Index, a research project led by the Potomac Conference of the Greater Washington Board of Trade and the Brookings Greater Washington Research Program, recently revealed that the region continues to face challenges to affect the ability to maintain the basic environmental qualities that the region must have in order to attract and retain businesses and residents.

Examples of challenges include reducing ozone levels and improving the water quality of the Anacostia River and other urban waterways. The region is also consuming land at a faster rate than its population growth and has one of the worst traffic congestion problems in the country. If these trends continue, within the next several years the region could loose much of its unique character and become yet another urban area in need of restoration. If we have learned anything about management of our natural environment, it is that restoration is far more difficult -- and costly -- than conservation.

Why Lockheed Martin?

Here are some of the reasons that Lockheed Martin is viewed as the ideal corporate partner for a project of this nature:

* Lockheed Martin’s vision is “To be the world’s best advanced technology systems integrator.” Information system integration is the fundamental technological building block for the National Capital Atlas. It also provides a tangible example of the potential benefits of information systems integration. The atlas is a platform to showcase this capability.

* Lockheed Martin has a reputation for innovation in the use of technology to disseminate information, solve large and complex problems, and call in significant resources thru its long “corporate reach”.

* Lockheed Martin has a commitment to global and regional needs through application of state-of-the-art systems engineering analysis.

* Lockheed Martin’s existing services, such as Project Netbook, Intranet Quorum, Capability Maturity Model Integration, and Environmental Systems Engineering, can be used in the National Capital Region, to illustrate the value of this technology and expertise to help regional efforts to achieve and sustain quality of life goals.

* Lockheed Martin’s headquarters is in Bethesda, MD, in the heart of the National Capital Region.

* Lockheed Martin has a reputation as a good corporate citizen demonstrated thru support of the July 4 celebration.

* As a corporation with links to government and regional history, Lockheed Martin is likely to be involved with the region for the long-term, and therefore has a stake in the development and quality of life of the region.

* Lockheed Martin has already partnered, thru cost-sharing with the Department of the Interior thru distance learning, to bring new technologies to Native American communities in support of the better understanding of associations between human populations and their landscapes.

Why this Partnership?

The proposal calls for the creation of a new partnership between Lockheed Martin -- “the world’s best advanced technology systems integrator” and the National Park Service, National Capital Region -- steward of parks and programs serving residents and visitors from across the U.S. and around the globe. The partnership brings together recognized, regionally-based private and public sector leaders, along with an experienced team of interdisciplinary experts, to link Lockheed Martin’s technology and view of the future with the Park Service’s understanding of landscapes, history and the public. The partnership is well positioned to help regional leaders help themselves use an understanding of the past and the present to achieve a sustainable future.





































Attachment A: Examples of Similar Projects Involving National Capital Atlas Participants

Metropolitan Washington, DC Green Infrastructure Demonstration Project. Over the last four years the National park Service and the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, with the support of Congress, and others, have implemented a “Green Infrastructure Demonstration Project” to respond to the situation, explore alternatives and take action.

The project had as its goals (1) raising awareness of the value of parks, open space and recreation areas to the area’s quality of life, (2) building a lasting public constituency for a metropolitan region system of park, open space and recreation areas that addresses the needs of people, landscapes and nature and that could be developed through public/private partnerships, and (3) bringing about a metropolitan region that has a balance between the built environment and green space, sustained by natural processes able to support and enhance the quality of life for its people and communities.

The demonstration project is based on a series of partnerships and an over-arching collaborative approach to doing business. Several organizations are helping to provide “quiet enabling leadership” for the effort. Key to the approach is the idea of building a platform that people can use to share information, discuss issues and interests, and build consensus for future action. Each of these organizations has different responsibilities that are being linked together to provide for improved communication, efficiency, and innovation.

The partnership has involved nine primary public and private organizations and more than 850 representatives from various local, states, regional, and federal government agencies, private groups and businesses. The project has resulted in a regional green space and agricultural land maps, status and trend information on green space and agriculture lands, public forums and workshops on best management practices and civic engagement techniques, identification and implementation of site-specific innovative best practices, information for local training, and identification of expert and community leader networks.

J. Glenn Eugster, the National Nark Service’s National Capital Region, Assistant Regional Director for Partnerships, was a primary instigator of the Green Infrastructure Demonstration Project, and has been active in the development of regional conservation strategies in his previous work as director of partnership programs for the Chesapeake Bay Program and as primary architect of the National Park Service’s Rivers and Trails Technical Assistance Program, a program that is now active in all 50 states.

Pacific Northwest Rivers Study and Protected Areas Program. Twenty years ago the Northwest Power Planning Council and the Bonneville Power Administration teamed with the states of Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington to create, for the first time, a common river system information system. This system, which made use of early personal computer and geographic information system technology, evaluated the significance of each river and stream in the Pacific Northwest for a series of environmental values. By virtue of using the same data structure and terminology, and being readily accessible, the four states, federal agencies, and regional authorities were able to come to establish the nation’s most extensive and far-reaching rivers protection program.

The data system has evolved along with technology and scientific knowledge and today the Pacific Northwest region has a robust information system that is at the center of fish and wildlife decision-making throughout the region. In the past twenty years numerous federal and state policy initiatives have used the information in this system, now called StreamNet, as the basis for decisions. This past year biologists and regional planners in 58 watersheds in the Columbia River Basin prepared detailed fish and wildlife protection and restoration plans that will serve as the basis for allocating federal resource management funds within the Columbia Basin. The data systems established through the Pacific Northwest Rivers Study served as the basis for these plans, which included geographic system analysis and ecological modeling that would have been impossible without the underlying information system.

Drew O. Parkin, a regional planner and one of the principals in the National Capital Region atlas initiative, designed and coordinated the Pacific Northwest Rivers Study and was instrumental in improving the system over the years and applying it to emerging regional planning and policy initiatives. Mr. Parkin has also coordinated the development of similar environmental data systems in other regions of the country, including statewide river and lake information systems in Maine, and statewide river information systems in Hawaii and Vermont, as well as advising several other states concerning the development of aquatic resource assessments and information systems. The keys to success in all of these efforts have been (1) an expanded geography, (2) consistency in approach, and (3) collaboration among independent partner organizations.

Green, More or Less. In late 1996 a unique collaboration among the Washington Post and the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, the National Center for Resource Innovations, (NCRI)-Chesapeake, Inc., a non-profit organization, teamed to create a project that came to be known as ‘Green More or Less’. The goal of the project was to provide, through a series of weekend articles in the Post, and through their website, a glimpse through pictures and stories into the future of land use change for the region, by small area geographies (50 households at a time). It was hoped that this series would elicit a general public awareness of the impacts of collective effects of local decision making upon the quality of life in the region in the future to the year 2020.

Each of the partners contributed their own resources in people, time and effort over an intense three-month period. The Post fielded reporters to each of the 13 local governments to collect plans, ordinances and other documents related to growth in the study area. The Council of Governments provided demographic data and project coordination. NCRI – funded by Congress through the US Department of Agriculture for such collaborative programs -- provided the GIS and analytical support for the product: a series of articles ran in the Post over three weekends in March 1997. Data and images were provided to all who requested them. Others used the Post’s website to capture information relevant to local, as well as regional issues.

The project showed, for the first time, how some communities in the region were achieving their stated goals of managed growth and how others were taking a different tack. Overall, observers seemed surprised by the magnitude of the picture painted for the region by the aggregate of smaller, relatively independent decisions at the local level. From this project came the oft-quoted number that supports the statement “Everyday we lose 28 acres of open space to urban development in the Washington DC Metropolitan Region.” While locally this number varied significantly, it was clear that while population growth and expansion was expected to convert approximately 37% of the region’s forestland and farmland by the year 2020 to urban uses, there were essentially no new lands being planned for Parks and Open Space other than those established much earlier in the 1930s as to-day’s federal and state-managed parklands.

Margaret Maizel, an information systems architect and one of the principals in the National Capital Region atlas initiative, coordinated the development of the spatial information that served as the foundation for the Green more or Less Post articles. Ms. Maizel has been involved in numerous regional projects involving geographic system data development and analysis, including several in the greater Washington, DC area. Following are two additional examples of her collaborative work with public and private partners.

Land Use History of North America. This project had followed two others by NCRI-Chesapeake, Inc.: An early version of this project was originally funded by the Laurel Foundation of Pennsylvania through the American Farmland Trust in Washington DC, NCRI had, in the late 1980s analyzed historical interrelationships between population expansion, and farmland creation and decline across the US between 1760 and 1990. This project was expanded in a new collaborative project, with the then National Biological Survey of the US Geological Survey. NCRI-Chesapeake had worked previously with this group to help develop GIS technologies to local governments and the Parks.

The project, published as the Chapter “Historical Interrelationships Between Population Settlement and Farmland in the Conterminous United States, 1790 to 1992 by the U.S. Geological Survey in its book, “Land Use History of North America” has been used extensively to assess historical effects of population expansion associated with transportation and other technological development and food-producing landscapes not only upon farmland creation and decline, but also upon related carbon sequestration, transport and conversion is still found on the web site at: http://biology.usgs.gov/luhna/

Population Settlements as Landscape Components in Southeastern Pennsylvania. Another related study illustrated the striking attractions between different cultural communities and the specific landscapes upon which they chose to settle. Again, this project involved a unique partnership between Jonathan Robbin, a noted social demographer and founder and CEO of the Claritas Corporation, an international target marketing company, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Regulation, and the State Conservationists’ office of the Natural Resources Conservation Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Social population settlement (demographic) data as integrated with physical landscape characteristics including among others, soils, land cover, water resources, and geology revealed clusters of settlements with unique, striking and characteristic ties to landscape units that provide clues to the roles that socio-cultural backgrounds play in choices about where and how people live.

The goal of this project, developed in response to mandates in the federal Government Performance and Results Act of 1993, was designed to illuminate ways that modern private market targeting techniques might provide more comprehensive insight into the understanding of the lifestyles, preferences and practices of farmers and residents of the 13 counties encompassing urban-rural continuum from Philadelphia west to Franklin county in southeastern Pennsylvania.