AN EVALUTION OF PRIORITIZATION TECHNIQUES FOR AGRICULTURAL LAND PRESERVATION IN FREDERICK COUNTY, MD

Abstract

Using three years of application data, this project is an evaluation of prioritization techniques as applied to an existing agricultural land preservation program in Frederick County, Maryland. Recent publications have suggested that rank-based or benefittargeting prioritization systems are inefficient and more costly than alternative prioritization methods such as discount ranking, cost effectiveness analysis, or linear programming. This project evaluates alternative methods of prioritization and explores how using these alternative methods would have changed the total acres preserved as a result of past easement acquisition cycles in the Maryland Agricultural Land Preservation Foundation (MALPF) Program in Frederick County. The results of the analysis reveal that of the techniques explored, linear programming consistently outperforms all other techniques used for the prioritization of land preservation applications.