San Joaquin Valley Project Prioritization Tool

In 2017, American Farmland Trust (AFT) and the Conservation Biology Institute (CBI) assessed the capacity and resilience of agricultural production in the San Joaquin Valley by analyzing the distribution and quality of the region’s farmland and water resources while also considering future impacts. The San Joaquin Land and Water Strategy used maps and summarized data analysis to show how the risk to agricultural land from future development could be significantly reduced by implementing more compact and efficient development patterns.

The San Joaquin Land and Water Strategy provided the background and supporting structure for the next phase of the project on the Data Basin platform: the Project Prioritization Tool.

The associated manual demonstrates how SJV stakeholders can use this tool to select and support projects that meet priority criteria and have the greatest potential to effectively infiltrate and conserve water. Using this tool, AFT and other stakeholders in the San Joaquin Valley can identify and develop agricultural land protection and natural resource conservation projects and support larger land use planning decisions.

The interactive and modular mapping platform provides users with a default “start-up map” that has layers dedicated to farmland quality, development threat level, crops, and water resources among other data.