GIS Shapefile - Analysis of potential stewardship in support of BES research, Baltimore City, block group

Potential stewardship for Residential parcels in Baltimore City summarized by block group. Residential parcels was defined as only those parcels with a land use code of residential (LU_CODE = "R") based on the 2003 Maryland Property View A&T database. PRIZM 5, 15, and 62 classes are also present. PRIZM is the Potential Rating Index by Zip code Markets produced by the Claritas Corporation - > http://www.clusterbigip1.claritas.com/claritas/Default.jsp>. Total Potential stewardship is that land within a parcels not occupied by buildings, that is land that could potentially support vegetation, regardless of whether or not any vegetation is present. Realized Potential Stewardship is land that is currently occupied by vegetation. Not Realized Potential Stewardship is the land not occupied by buildings or existing vegetation, and is thus the land that is potentially available for "greening" initiatives. Normalization for realized and not realized potential stewardship is carried out by dividing by the total potential stewardship. The potential stewardship was calculated using parcel data, building footprints, and GDT census block groups. Building footprints were erased from the parcel area, resulting in a layer indicating the potential stewardship for each parcel. The potential stewardship layer was then unioned MD DNR's 2001 SUFA vegetation layer. All polygons corresponding to water features were deleted since water features cannot undergo "greening." All polygons that did fall in the potential stewardship area were deleted. This resulted in a layer in which the polygons represented the potential stewardship land along with the potential stewardship land occupied by either grass or trees. This layer was then intersected with the census block group layer resulting in a layer that had the potential stewardship land, potential stewardship vegetation, and block group IDs. All attributes were then summarized at the block group level. A cursory analysis of the parcel data indicated that parcel data was outdated for the following block groups: 245102503031, 245102503032, and 245102503033. Certain block groups with very high Normalized Total Potential Stewardship values may be indicative of the fact that building footprint data was missing, although the extent of this problem is unknown. Note: transportation networks are not part of the parcel data, and thus were appropriately not part of this analysis.