Benefits Toolkit

The Landscape Performance Series Benefits Toolkit is a searchable collection of online tools and calculators to estimate landscape performance.

The tools can be used to estimate specific landscape benefits for completed projects when actual measurements are not available, or they can be used in the design phase to compare projected benefits among various options. Many tools also allow the user to compare life-cycle costs for conventional and sustainable design features.

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TESSA is a PDF-based tool that evaluates the benefits of ecosystem services and natural capital for an individual site, as opposed to other tools that are more applicable at scale. It also allows users to compare estimates of potential land-use changes to reveal the consequences to people and nature and help…

Topics

Conservation, Restoration

Carbon Conscience

Sasaki

This web-based application estimates the potential for carbon emissions, carbon storage, and carbon sequestration for design alternatives based on land use and at various scales. It can be used in the early stages of a project at various scales to compare design options, test alternate land uses, structural systems…

Topics

Carbon sequestration & avoidance

sustainable-lot

Pathfinder: Landscape Carbon Calculator

Climate Positive Design

This  web-based application allows registered users to estimate the carbon footprint and time to carbon neutral for landscape projects based on site design and management. It may be used for projects in the design phase or already completed projects. The only required inputs are project type, site boundaries, and…

Topics

Carbon sequestration & avoidance

COMET-Farm

Colorado State University and USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service

This tool estimates carbon footprint and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for farms and ranches. Users input current farm or ranch management practices, and the tool uses information on climate and soil conditions from USDA databases to run a series of models for potential sources of GHG emissions and climate change…

Topics

Carbon sequestration & avoidance

iNaturalist

California Academy of Sciences and National Geographic Society

iNaturalist is a worldwide online network of biodiversity information that provides access to millions of citizen science observations of plant and animal biodiversity. It functions as a crowdsourced species identification system and organism recurrence recording tool to help understand the presence and prevalence of…

Topics

Populations & species richness, Biodiversity, Resilience, Restoration

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