The Rogue Valley Ecological Framework: Mapping Open Space, Ecologically Important Areas, and Ecological Corridors for Transportation Planners, Agencies, Municipalities, Developers, Conservation NGOs, and Citizens

TRB’s second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2) has released a report that describes the result of a pilot test of the first three steps of the nine-step Integrated Ecological Framework (IEF) in the Rogue Valley, Jackson County, Oregon. The first three steps of the process result in a regional ecosystem framework (REF), which was defined as an overlay of regional environmental, ecological, and archaeological data with planned and existing transportation infrastructure.

The IEF was developed in SHRP 2 Projects C06A (Integration of Conservation, Highway Planning, and Environmental Permitting Using an Outcome-Based Ecosystem Approach) and C06B (Integration of Conservation, Highway Planning, and Environmental Permitting Through Development of an Outcome-Based Ecosystem-Scale Approach and Corresponding Credit System). The IEF is available on the Transportation for Communities—Advancing Projects through Partnerships (TCAPP) website. TCAPP is now known as PlanWorks.

Other pilot tests were conducted in California, Colorado, and West Virginia.