Geo 4427 - Spring 2023 Professor: Dr. Yihong Yuan Lab Instructor: Raihan Jamil
Urban Tree Canopy continues to be an environmental goal of American cities in the 21st century. The City of Austin has stated goals that would serve to expand their urban forest with requirements of improvement to climate equity. Treecon has been tasked with assessing the potential planting space with updated 2022 data and identifying immediate actionable public parcels to prioritize in future planting. The possible planting space was calculated with high precision and accuracy. Analysis was conducted concerning equity, ecological risk and planting potential contribution to provide priority parcel identification to the City of Austin. This was completed by way of a basic subjective scoring system based upon the data available. The results of this analysis should provide a stepping stone for more mature considerations to tackle climate equity issues for the City of Austin. The City of Austin tasked Treecon to calculate the new 2022 possible planting space. With that output Treecon identified public owned parcels inside the study area that will provide the most benefit to selected ecological attributes and what provides the best climate equity by locations denoted from the City of Austin as being underserved. Treecon was given authority on deciding how to conduct the analysis and what additional variables are to be considered. Data was provided concerning current Tree Canopy, Impervious Surface Layer, Surface water and useful boarder attributes that stretched the width and breadth of the watershed multitudes that serve the Austin area. The analysis was constrained to the extent of this study area and deliverables were presented in May 2023..	At the request of the Greater Edwards Aquifer Alliance (GEAA) the Water Wizards consulting group has completed several different tasks. First, we have completed a new weighted overlay analysis that has been updated with relevant data provided by the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality (TCEQ). This weighted overlay analysis focuses on Wastewater Treatment Plants (WWTPs) that are in our study area with varying levels of importance being assigned to each plant based on their proximity to an impaired water source, and which priority zone they operate in. Secondly, we have created an interactive web map and dashboard for the GEAA that will allow them to track the effluent data of each WWTP that operates within the region of the Edwards Aquifer and its nearby surrounding area. Lastly, we are providing the GEAA and Texas State University with this written report which will provide an in-depth explanation of the goal of our project, the obstacles we faced during our study, our data sources, methodology, and our results. We believe that providing these deliverables will further enable the GEAA to maintain water purity levels within the Edwards Aquifer.