This report, An Ecological Approach to Integrating Conservation and Highway Planning, Volume 1, describes the role of federal and state agencies and other stakeholders in the early environmental scanning of additions to highway capacity. It presents the five phases of the research approach, and it identifies incentives, benefits, barriers, and assurance needs associated with early involvement of environmental agencies in highway planning; tools such as banking and programmatic agreements for ensuring that the interests of all parties are met; strategies for commitment tracking; an inventory of assurance methods and the limits of using assurance methods at an ecoscale; and major findings. Early involvement, collaboration, and an ecological approach can lead to better transportation projects and more effective environmental protection. Volume 2 presents the Integrated Ecological Framework, provides technical background on cumulative effects assessment, ecological accounting strategies, ecosystems services, and partnership strategies, along with a summary of the available ecological tools that are most applicable to this type of work. The Volume 2 appendices document three pilot projects that tested the approach during the research. The Practitioner’s Guide to the Integrated Ecological Framework provides step-by-step information to help practitioners use the IEF. Essential content from the C06 project is available on the Federal Highway Administration’s PlanWorks website (Summer 2014). The site can be accessed by its former name, which is Transportation for Communities: Advancing Projects through Partnerships, or TCAPP (http://www.transportationforcommunities.com). (Author/publisher)
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