PLAN
Opportunities and Constraints, or — What You Can Do With What You’ve Got
After identifying your goals and assessing the land’s history, current conditions, and future potential (How Land Works), the next step in the planning process is to think through opportunities and constraints within the project area. This page will help you define which Practices or projects are appropriate for your situation and the different areas within your site.
You can also hire professionals who specialize in helping you assess your project opportunities and constraints, balance trade-offs, strategically avoid unnecessary impacts, and identify appropriate Practices.
Knowing more about how land works can inform your expectations and goals. See this primer on Ecological Principles.
Step 1: Make a map
Working off a map is critical when making informed trade-offs and deciding which Practices are feasible in specific locations.
At its simplest, you can print a section from Google Maps and draw on it.
Professionals often create multiple detailed maps to show where different opportunities and constraints exist. Keep in mind that maps help with many issues but not all – for example they do not show permit requirements or project costs.
Layer the different opportunities and constraints to see where they overlap, either with mental maps of the land or digital map layers.
Step 2: Describe opportunities and constraints
For each of the categories below, reflect on these two questions:
- Where are there opportunities to make things better in this category?
- Where are there barriers to accomplishing your goals in this category?
The bullets provide example questions to guide your reflection. To answer these questions, you’ll likely need to revisit your Land Inventory, Permitting, Funding, Resources for Implementing, and the requirements of different Practices you’re considering.
Topography
- Where do steep slopes make it unwise to use vehicles or heavy equipment?
- Where are flat, firm, open areas to stage material, or do Practices such as making biochar?
- Are there low-lying flat areas that hold water? These are potential wetlands that could flourish with proper management.
- Are there flat areas alongside streams that could be restored to healthy riparian or wetland habitat?
Soils and stability
- Are there areas of unstable soils, erosion, gullying, or temporary water courses that are lowering over time?
- Are there areas of deep rich soils that should not be disturbed or driven over?
Water resources
- How does water flow over the land?
- Where does it collect?
- Where could it collect, if the topography were a bit different?
- Are there places where eroding gullies are next to areas needing thinning, where gully stuffing might be appropriate?
- Which parts of the site could you get water to, for example to make biochar?
Plants and carbon stocks
- Where are the biggest and oldest plants (usually trees, but sometimes perennial grasses or shrubs such as manzanita)?
- Where is there a lack of mature healthy plants?
- Where are the plants over-crowded and could grow if they were thinned and “released”?
- Do certain areas harbor plant diseases?
Vegetation communities
- Are there situations that might require a permit (riparian areas, streams, wetlands)?
- Are there special-status plants like Napa false indigo or Sargent cypress, or habitats such as serpentinite soils that tend to have a lot of special species?
Invasive species
- Where are invasive species most dominant?
- Where are the seeds of the weeds coming from?
- Are there locations free of weeds, or where the invasion is just starting?
Wildlife
- Which areas get the least visitation from people? These are probably important for wildlife.
- Which wildlife species have you identified are most sensitive to disturbance?
- Where are there known nests, burrows, roosting trees, snags, rock outcrops, year-round water, deep moist forest duff, wetlands, or other areas of value to wildlife?
Cultural and archaeological resources
- Where are there historical or indigenous objects that need to be left undisturbed?
- What kinds of present-day Indigenous uses of the land are possible, and where?
Accessibility
- What areas within the site are accessible by vehicle? This will determine which Practices are feasible. Consider accessibility options via neighbor’s land, or whether your site could provide emergency access for neighbors.
- What areas could a crew potentially access on foot?
- Where do you need to improve road or trail conditions before anything else (e.g. replacing a culvert would enable vehicle access)?
- How can you minimize the effort and cost of moving cut woody material?
Resources for Implementing
- How much money can you, your family, or your friends spend?
- Who can you partner with?
- Are you in a high priority location for public funding?
- Are there multi-parcel plans already in motion that affect your site, such as a shaded fuel break network or a watershed restoration plan?
- Are there timing constraints to any of the different funding sources?
- How much work can you yourself do physically?
- Do you have resources you can offer to people or organizations who could help: camping, event venue, wood, food, training opportunities, conservation easement?
Turning Constraints into Opportunities
Often, if you avoid using heavy equipment and instead opt for using hand tools and crews, valued resources such as soil and water can be more easily protected.
Constraints created by a Practice that requires permits can often be avoided by simply avoiding or minimizing the impact. An example is scheduling work to avoid the impact (e.g. working outside of bird nesting season). All impact avoidance measures also serve to protect the environment.
Understanding the breadth of Practices available will help you visualize your options.
- Review Managing Woody Material for ideas.
- Headcut Gully Stuffing is an example of turning a constraint into an opportunity. This practice uses woody material to stabilize an eroding channel and conserve soil and water.
Example of evaluating tradeoffs: you might intend to limb or thin trees for the benefit of wildfire resilience, but for some areas steep slopes and a protected stream corridor might physically constrain access and trigger stream permitting requirements. One solution could be to avoid working in those areas of the site to avoid the environmental impacts to the slope and stream corridor, thereby avoiding the need for a permit while simultaneously protecting the environment.