Environmental Constraints & Solar Opportunity Analysis (Screening)

Objective

Evaluate county-scale solar development potential by screening land for environmental constraints and practical development feasibility.

• Identify land compatible with utility-scale solar development.
• Delineate viable site polygons meeting minimum size thresholds.
• Highlight strategic regional opportunity zones for large-scale investment.

Data used

• USGS 3DEP Digital Elevation Model — slope and terrain feasibility screening.
• National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) — hydrologic setback and surface-water protection buffers.
• FEMA National Flood Hazard Layer — floodplain development constraints.
• NLCD Land Cover — land-cover compatibility screening
• US Census TIGER county boundary — study area extent.

All datasets were projected into a common UTM coordinate system and aligned using consistent raster snapping, extent, and cell size parameters.

Approach

• Terrain feasibility modeling: slope derived from elevation data and reclassified for construction feasibility; areas above about 10 degrees treated as unsuitable.
• Hydrologic protection constraints: surface-water buffers applied around streams, drainage features, and waterbodies using NHD data.
• Flood risk exclusion: FEMA flood hazard zones incorporated as development constraints.
• Land-cover compatibility screening: compatible and incompatible land uses reclassified for utility-scale solar siting.
• Integrated suitability model: all constraint layers combined using Boolean raster multiplication to identify environmentally suitable land.
• Developable site delineation: suitable land converted to polygons and filtered using a minimum threshold of 50 acres.
• Strategic opportunity zoning: Tier-1 candidate sites of 2,000+ acres aggregated to identify regional solar development zones.

Key outputs

• County-wide solar suitability surface.
• Developable solar site polygons filtered to practical minimum size.
• Strategic solar opportunity zones derived from clustered Tier-1 sites.
• Summary metrics for viable acreage, site count, and priority zones.

Summary of findings

• Approximately 351,310 acres of environmentally suitable land were identified.
• A total of 560 viable candidate sites met practical development thresholds.
• The analysis delineated 24 high-priority Tier-1 sites and multiple strategic opportunity regions.
• Terrain limitations were minimal due to the relatively flat High Plains topography.

Limitations

• Raster results should be interpreted comparatively, not at parcel microtopography scale.
• Transmission access, substation capacity, and land ownership were not modeled.
• Soil geotechnical conditions and local zoning were outside scope.
• Screening-level only; not a substitute for engineering or permitting studies.