Some parcels provide opportunities to protect a large number of resources for less money then other parcels. Other features being equal, these parcels should be protected first, thereby maximizing the amount of resources protected for the amount of money spent on openspace protection.

This is accomplished in this system by determining the amount of resources per dollar that would be protected for each parcel of land. A further discussion of this is in the methods section.

To better understand the effectiveness of this approach, the first two graphs show the amount of points gained per dollar, per acre, on resources as the more openspace is protected. As one would expect, the low hanging fruit is purchased first, and efficiency of buying land drops drastically as to the program progresses.

It is interesting to note that there is almost no difference between the two point systems.

The bottom graph shows the same information as the top two graphs, the number of points per dollar per acre as more openspace is protected.

This graph uses the scoring system from the web survey without taking the cost of the parcels into account. It is apparent from this graph that the most efficient parcels are not purchased first. Therefore, not taking cost into account does causes ineffecient parcels to be protected early on. For example, the spike in the middle of the graph shows a parcel that does not have a large number of resources, but is relatively inexpensive. Purchasing this parcel before one of the earlier parcels allows for more resources overall to be protected for the same amount of money. Clearly, points per dollar per acre is a better way of evaluating parcels.