Future Student Projects

• to find a better way to distinguish between and define land preserved for rural character, recreation, and habitat. A new scenic quality/rural character inventory that is developed with help from multiple departments within the DEM, as well as local groups and private groups will help flesh out the fairly ambiguous nature of rural character and encourage planners to seriously consider using rural character as an important criteria for land preservation. The inventory from 1990 is old, hardly anyone knows it exists, and no one seriously uses it to preserve land for scenic/rural character reasons. Whiteman and Taintor Planning, Policy, and Development Consultants are working with the Scenic Byways Program to create such a survey.
• to compile general land use plans for each town in Rhode Island - the web page for the Wood-Pawcatuck Watershed Project has the comprehensive plans for a good number of southern Rhode Island towns. Compiling the rest of the plans, and encouraging those towns who have not yet completed a thorough comprehensive plan to finish one, is important.
• to facilitate towns' getting together and compiling data concerning preserved land. Many towns preserve land, but do not consider their neighboring towns in determining which land to preserve. Many small pockets of preserved land may actually be better managed as a coherent whole. Making a GIS map of locally preserved land would greatly improve an enterprise such as this, for when visually presented, potential partnerships become more apparent.
• to go through all the local town data and private conservation group data to uncover which land is counted by the DEM and listed on their land acquisition page, and which is not. See Inconsistencies and Data Gaps.
• to create RIGIS maps for recreation land, habitat land, and scenic land (for each common, noteworthy, and distinctive categories), in concert with creating a new scenic quality inventory.
• to better understand urban character. What defines urban character, and is it as important to people as the concept of rural character?

Future State Projects

• to facilitate all towns having growth management strategies. In this way, towns will take control of their own development and decide the future of their land before it is decided for them by the present day course of development.
• to protect an additional 35,000 acres of land by 2010 (see DEM's Open Space 2000 Campaign).
• to maintain and strengthen partnerships with other public, private, and nonprofit programs and through these partnerships, to at least double bond money; the $34 million bond will be used to leverage other funding sources, resulting in a total of $80 million or more for open space protection over five years (see DEM's Open Space 2000 Campaign).
• to continue to purchase and protect land according to the following programs: Agricultural Land Preservation Program - this program preserves land through the purchase of farmland development rights; State Land Acquisition - this program uses state, federal and foundation funds to acquire property for recreation, hunting, fishing and other outdoor activities; Forest Legacy - this program uses federal funds to acquire easements or fee simple title for the purpose of protecting the state's forest resources; North American Wetland Conservation Act - this program uses federal funds to acquire easements or fee title to protect waterfowl habitat.
• see Work Plans for specific plans for certain areas.

(See Inconsistencies and Data Gaps.)

Rural Character Main/Open Space Main/RI Indicators