Sensitive Habitat

We sought to devise a method that would allow us to quantify the effects of solar development on California desert ecology and biodiversity. Because quantifying all potential ecological impacts, such as impacts to all landscape-level ecological processes or impacts to individual species, was neither practical nor feasible, the replacement of rare or endangered species habitat by solar development was used as an indicator for other potential ecological impacts. The effect of solar development on these habitats is just one of the possible ecological impacts. By developing a numerical scoring system that corresponds with established classification systems, we were able to quantify the ecological impact of individual facilities and each development scenario on rare or endangered species habitat.