PROJECT SUMMARY:

Identification & Measurement of NFT Areas

Marin Municipal Water District (MMWD)

Marin Municipal Water District (MMWD) is taking action to ban decorative or non-functional grass to encourage permanent water saving measures. MMWD is looking for commercial and industrial areas to remove unnecessary areas of turf in favor or drought-tolerant plants to decrease water use.

DCSE has evaluated Functional versus Non-Functional Turf (NFT) and identified locations of NFT within the MMWD service area using a Remote Sensing and Photo interpretation techniques to provide support for removal efforts. Public medians, streetscape sidewalks, parkway strips, interior and commercial building’s adjacent turf are all general examples of the NFT identified and located for this project.

DCSE created a machine learning classification model to apply on high-resolution NAIP imagery of 2018 and identify the irrigable areas. Irrigable areas consisted of turfgrass (healthy green, plus yellow/dead vegetated areas) and trees covering the grass throughout the district’s service area.

Next, NFT candidates were obtained through a comprehensive model, including automated, manual, and visual processes, developed to refine the map of irrigable areas.

The final output integrates NFT from within and outside of commercial and industrial parcel boundaries with an overall estimated 2 million sq.ft. of NFT within the MMWD service area.

By identifying these locations of NFT that provide little or no recreational or community benefit, DCSE can visualize and inform MMWD of areas to target their conservation efforts tied to removing such turf. The polygon outputs serve as a basis to evaluate how impactful removal efforts will be and quantify monetary as well as environmental benefits.

HIGHLIGHTS

Distinguishes commercial and industrial NFT
Query, analyze, and visualize NFT at the parcel level and across several imagery sources
Identify turf locations representative of inefficient water consumption

BENEFITS

Enables a water district to visualize, locate and measure purposeless grass areas and transform it into targets for efforts to ban NFT
Supports action to reduce demand on local reservoir

PROJECT OWNER

Marin Municipal Water District (MMWD)

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