Values Mapping for Planning in Regional Ecosystems (VaMPIRE)

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) manages 245 million acres of public lands and 700 million acres of mineral estate for multiple land uses. To accomplish this, the BLM prepares land-use plans also called Resource Management Plans. BLM invites public input, local voices and diverse views during planning processes. The USGS Social and Economic Analysis Branch is partnering with the BLM to develop a Public Participatory GIS tool to aid in gathering information from people about their values for public lands and waters for consideration during planning, permitting, and management efforts. This tool is called the Values Mapping for Planning in Regional Ecosystems (VaMPIRE) Public Participatory GIS application.

The VaMPIRE application is customizable depending on the needs of a given public land or water decision making process. VaMPIRE is designed to gather spatial data on the values people attach to places and the activities they do in those places. The spatially referenced data can be used to identify landscape values; how proposed management actions might affect use and value; where potential conflicts might occur; and high-performing areas where multiple values can co-exist. These social data can be overlaid with other spatially available data such as resource conditions to better understand how management actions might influence changes in visitor use patterns or experiences.

Data could be collected through visitor intercept surveys, email lists, and local workshops. VaMPIRE incorporates a survey designed to assess behavioral changes by the public based on land-use, and explores if visitors would change locations, activities, or frequency of visits given possible land-use change scenarios. In order to assess the effects and tradeoffs of management decisions the application will also ask users how potential changes to the landscape might impact their overall quality of experience.