Author: Sam Haas, Conservation Assistant at Saratoga PLAN
In the summer of 2023, my last summer as a college student before graduating from Skidmore College with a degree in Environmental Science, I had the opportunity to participate in an internship with NASA DEVELOP, a program dedicated to providing useful information to partners in all 50 states using NASA satellites and sensors. Our project involved working with Saratoga PLAN, as well as the Finger Lakes Land Trust and Genesee Land Trust, to predict future development and identify and soil carbon losses that have been avoided by preventing the development of agriculture lands. Soil has the capacity to store immense amounts of carbon, usually as organic matter. It is the second largest carbon sink on the planet, second only to the ocean. During the process of converting open land into development, this organic matter is broken down and the carbon is released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide and methane, where it contributes to the greenhouse effect and climate change. Once open land is developed, it can lose almost all of its ability to further sequester carbon.
To estimate these losses, we created an equation that uses the age and relative development pressure of each easement as well as known rates of soil carbon losses to estimate how much soil carbon loss has been prevented by PLAN’s farmland protection. We estimated that Saratoga PLAN has likely prevented 242.24 tons of CO2 from being released from the soil into the atmosphere. That’s the equivalent of burning 27,231 gallons of gasoline! If every farm that PLAN has helped conserved had been converted to high density development, instead of being conserved, we calculated that there would have been an additional 58,006.58 tons of CO2 released to the atmosphere.
In order to create our model to predict future development pressure and likelihood of development of remaining unprotected farmland in our region, we used population density, proximity to previous development, transmission lines, and the brightness of light generated from human activity as seen from space at night. This model was able to predict 2021 development from 2001 land cover with an accuracy of 84%. We used the model to predict development by 2030 and 2050 and created a score for how likely each farm was to be developed by 2050. Finally, we looked at satellite imagery from 1985 to 2023 to calculate development rates around conservation easements and found that within ~3/4 mile of PLAN’s easements, there is an average of 16% of surrounding farmland being converted to developed land.
This project introduced me to Saratoga PLAN and made it an easy decision to apply to work there after graduation. Since joining PLAN, we have used the data from the NASA project to help us prioritize which lands to conserve and identify areas where outreach is needed to protect working farms and the agricultural landscapes before they are lost to development forever.
My main takeaway from this project confirmed something that PLAN and its supporters have recognized for 20+ years: development primarily expands out from itself, and our agriculture lands are uniquely attractive to developers and this development risks changing the rural character of the landscapes we have come to love. Still, the farmlands that drive the character of Saratoga County and play a vital role in economics and food security are just as important as creating new housing and job opportunities in the area. Using data and analysis’ like the one I created at NASA, PLAN and its partners are able to preserve high priority farmland in Saratoga County, while we still can.