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

Potential stewardship for Baltimore City summarized by block group. PRIZM 5, 15, and 62 classes are also present. PRIZM is the Potential Rating Index by Zip code Markets produced by the Claritas corportation - (http://www.clusterbigip1.claritas.com/claritas/Default.jsp). Potential stewardship is that land within a parcels not occupied by buildings, that is land that could potentially undergo "greening." 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. This dataset provides several summarizations at the block group level: 1) total potential stewardship area, 2) not realized potential stewardship, 3) normalized potential stewardship (potential stewardship area / block group area), 4) normalized not realized potential stewardship (not realized potential stewardship area / block group area), and 5) tree potential stewardship area. 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 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. Total Potential Stewardship (Tot_PotStew) is the area of parcel land in a block group that is not occupied by buildings or water. Not Realized Potential Stewardship (NotReal_PotStew) is the area of parcel land in a block group that is not occupied by buildings, water, or vegetation, and is thus the land that is actually available for greening. Normalized Potential Stewardship (Norm_PotStew) is the Potential Stewardship area � Block Group area. Normalized Not Realized Potential Stewardship (Norm_NotReal_PotStew) is the Not Realized Potential Stewardship area � Block Group area. Summations of grass (Grass), tree (Trees), and vegetation (Tot_Veg) area within the potential steward zone are also presented. Tree potential stewardship (Tree_PotStew) was calculated by identifying the land that is available for plating trees, i.e. not building, water, or existing trees. Normalized tree potential stewardship (Norm_Tree_Pot_Stew) was calculated by dividing by the area of the block group. Standardized tree potential stewardship (Std_Tree_PotStew) was calculated from the normalized tree potential stewardship: ((value - min) / range) * 100. A cursory analysis of the parcel data indicated that parcel data was outdated for the following block groups: 245102503031, 245102503032, and 245102503033. Note: transportation networks are not part of the parcel data, and thus were appropriately not part of this analysis.