CONCURRENT SESSION ABSTRACTS
I-APeople and Planning (moderated by Bill Elmendorf)
The Importance of Leaders' and Residents' Attitudes Towards Open Space Conservation in a Growing Pennsylvania Watershed
Bill Elmendorf
School of Forest Resources, The Pennsylvania State University
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Although concern about open space conservation in growing places has been expressed by land use planners and others since the 1960s, limited empirical studies have been completed on the attitudes of both residents and leaders towards open space conservation in a rapidly developing watershed. Theories of democratic government suggest that for change to occur, there must be a congruence of attitudes between residents and leaders. Thus, when considering the meaningful conservation of open space, two questions can be posed— is open space conservation important to residents and leaders living in a developing watershed and are the attitudes towards conservation of the two groups congruent?
Analyses of data collected from key informant interviews and a multiple wave mail survey explored the importance of open space and open space conservation to residents and leaders in the developing Spring Creek Watershed of central Pennsylvania. Findings suggested that both residents and leaders considered open space conservation an important issue. Their attitudes were congruent with no substantive differences between them. These findings also supported municipal governments’ involvement in open space conservation, highlighted the negative impacts of poor municipal cooperation, showed a lack of understanding of regulatory and non-regulatory conservation tools, and indicated the need for both increased organizational capacity and a strong citizen voice for meaningful open space conservation.
Session I-A
Community Stakeholders’ Attitudes towards Ecosystem Restoration Goals and Programs in Southern Illinois’ Cache River Wetlands
Christopher A. Bridges, Mae A. Davenport, Jean C. Mangun, and Andrew D. Carver
Department of Forestry, Southern Illinois University
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Many natural resource restoration projects throughout North American urban-rural interfaces have set the stage for large scale ecological change. These projects also have the potential to effect change within social systems. While researchers have given the ecological aspects of restoration intense scrutiny, less is known about its social implications. This study investigates the knowledge, attitudes and behavioral intentions of community members living in southern Illinois, where traditional land use patterns have threatened significant wetland ecosystems. The Cache River Wetlands (CRW) restoration project is spearheaded by a Joint Venture Partnership (JVP) between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Illinois Department of Natural Resources, The Nature Conservancy and Ducks Unlimited. JVP goals are to restore 60,000 acres of forests and wetlands; specifically to reconnect the Cache River, reduce sedimentation, and restore wildlife habitat. Community members’ perceptions of the project and how its goals and programs affect their lives and livelihoods are unknown. Furthermore, guidance in how to best engage local community members is needed. Personal interviews were conducted with 25 diverse community representatives. Interview questions explored participants’ awareness of the JVP, attitudes toward wetland restoration, and potential involvement in future programs. Research findings indicate a lack of awareness of ecosystem restoration, particularly the need to better communicate local benefits of restoration. Also, residents perceived regional economic depression and associated time constraints as limiting community involvement in Cache River Wetlands restoration. Recommendations are presented for building community support and integrating local stakeholder values into similar restoration projects within the urban-rural interface.
Session I-A
People, Place and Politics: How Place Attachments Influence Natural Resource Disputes in an Urbanizing Environment
Janean H Creighton, Keith A Blatner, and Matthew S Carroll
Department of Natural Resource Sciences, Washington State University
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In Washington State, industrial forests are subdividing and selling off portions of their forestlands. People who desire a more rural lifestyle often purchase these smaller parcels, obscuring the distinction between urban and rural landowners. Along with the demographic changes can come increased conflicts over natural resource management, economic development, and the quality of life in rural areas. The primary reason for this research was to understand the values family-forest owners in western Washington assign to their forestland in an urbanizing environment. As the data collection in the study progressed it became apparent that place, both in terms of special relationships with particular parcels of forest land and perhaps even more in terms of rural lifeways being threatened by “urban” and “outsider” values, played a big role in the dynamics our interviewees were describing to us. Thus we apply theory from the place literature to this discussion.
Session I-A
Evaluating Place Attachment and Perceptions of Forest Management
Jonathan Cohen, Jean Mangun, and Mae Davenport
Southern Illinois University
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Public involvement is a vital component of environmental planning. Values held by stakeholders can drive conflict, but it can also unite diverse user groups under a common purpose. It is important to integrate stakeholder attitudes into the initial phases of Forest Management Plan development. The Shawnee National Forest (SNF) is located in southern Illinois southeast of the St. Louis Metropolitan Area. The objective of the present study is to develop a photoelicitation survey protocol to better understand and measure the attitudes of the public in the complex setting of the urban/rural interface. Participants were shown 9 photographs portraying 3 different applications of forest management practices: trails, fire, and harvesting. Each application was represented by 3 scenes depicting different phases of management treatments. Participants were asked to look at each photograph carefully and then respond on a semantic differential scale. An important feature of this study is the addition of a follow-up interview phase. Ten randomly selected respondents were asked to participate in an in-depth interview to discuss feelings and beliefs underlying the attitudes expressed during the survey and to better understand the level of place attachment respondents assigned to the region. Attitudinal data were analyzed using SPSS. Interview transcripts were coded and analyzed with qualitative research techniques. Study findings address the potential of photo-elicitation techniques to assess the ability of various SNF user groups to discriminate among management treatments as well as the role of prior place attachment to treatment evaluation.
Session I-A
I-BSymposium on the Cumberland Plateau (moderated by Donald Hodges)
Modeling Land Use Change and Its Environmental Impacts on the Southern Cumberland Plateau
Robert Gottfried, Robert, Christopher Butler, Nicholas Hollingshead, Matthew Lane, Brett Scheffers, and Douglass Williams
Sewanee Landscape Analysis Laboratory, The University of the South (RG, NH, BS, DW); Department of Biology, University of Central Oklahoma (CB); Tennessee Department of Transportation (ML)
This paper reviews the methodology and results of a USEPA-funded STAR grant to develop a GIS simulation model of land use change on the southern Cumberland Plateau of Tennessee. The model consists of two parts: a home construction model and a land cover change model. The former is based upon a logit analysis of parcels for 1980-2003 that takes into account parcel characteristics, landowner characteristics, land cover and homes in the surrounding area, and national or regional economic drivers. Using a similar suite of variables for 1997-2003, the land cover change model utilizes multinomial logit to estimate the probability that a portion of a parcel would convert from native hardwood forest to either grass/shrub or pine plantation. Each model provides input to the other. Whereas the home construction model replicated the historical experience rather well, the land cover model tended to overestimate the amount of clearing. Simulations run forward from 2004 to 2024 under differing assumptions of economic drivers showed very similar results – decreased hardwood, some growth in pine, and substantial growth in grass/shrub (hay/pasture or lawns). Most grass/shrub may be due to agricultural expansion, not clearing for homes. The paper discusses the impacts forest clearing may have on stream quality as affected by landowners’ maintaining historical levels of stream buffers, the variability of forest clearing across watersheds, the destruction of small vernal pools critical for amphibians on the Plateau, and the impact of cover change on bird populations.
Session I-B
Envisioning the Future of the Cumberland Plateau: Policy Proposals Emerging from Stakeholder Discussions
Charles D. Brockett and Katharine Wilkinson
University of the South and Oxford University
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Tennessee’s Cumberland Plateau features some of the highest conservation-value forests remaining in North America, critical, for example, for their neotropical migratory songbird habitat and as headwaters to the most biologically diverse freshwater stream systems found in the world. The plateau also features important human communities, often with deep roots and strong pride of place and tradition. The region currently faces widespread and intensive development pressures, particularly for retirement and second home construction on mountaintops and along ridgelines. In response, many land-owners (both corporations and individuals) are divesting and previously intact tracts of land are being subdivided. Given the significant interest in and unprecedented pressures on Tennessee’s Cumberland Plateau, an interdisciplinary team from three regional universities facilitated a series of meetings in the Fall of 2005 bringing together stakeholders and decision-makers from local, county, regional, and state levels for dialogue on the challenges and future of the Plateau. The project’s aim was to consider what tools are, or could be, available for shaping the future in accordance with residents’ values and desires, and to encourage innovative action in response to communities’ needs. The final conference had over 100 participants from seventeen different counties, along with regional and state officials. This paper by the project organizers reports on the results of these discussions and offers our own policy proposals based on them.
Session I-B
Patterns of Change in Tennessee's Northern Cumberlands
Longmire, Cindy, Donald Hodges, and David Ostermeier
Department of Forestry, Wildlife & Fisheries, University of Tennessee
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Population growth, shifting demographics and changing resident and landowner attitudes are critical parts of the emerging rural-urban interface in Tennessee’s Northern Cumberlands. As this interface evolves, the need to identify and understand landowner and residents’ attitudes regarding these natural resources has become more apparent. Using two quantitative surveys conducted in the region, this paper explores the trends in landowner and resident attitudes on the northern portion of the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee (Cumberland, Fentress, Morgan, and Scott Counties). Trends in the importance and reasoning for owning and managing land were identified along with the importance of community to landowners. From landowners surveyed, two main themes evident were landowners reporting little interest in timber management on their lands and a strong sense of the community being “in this together.” In another survey of area residents, values regarding natural resources and their impact on resource management preference are identified and examined. Knowledge of these social aspects of natural resource management is essential as communities, industry, local governments and other policy makers adjust to the emerging rural-urban changes in the region.
Session I-B
Exurbanization of Forest and Farmland on Tennessee's Southern Cumberland Plateau: A Spatial Analysis of the Impact of Land Use on Water Quality
Valerie Moye, Deborah McGrath, Nick Hollingshead and Ken Smith
University of the South
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The southern Cumberland Plateau supports some of the most biologically diverse ecosystems in North America, but most of this land is privately owned and not subject to zoning or growth restrictions. Thus the potential for unrestricted exurban growth is high, as are the potential negative impacts on ecosystems services provided by these natural areas. The aim of this study is to examine the associations between land use and stream water quality within the Stone Creek watershed, which flows from Plateau surface to the base of the plateau in the Sequatchie Valley. This watershed encompasses a mix of land uses including forest, exurban residential, and agricultural areas. A geographic information system (GIS) included geographic datasets representing land use/cover types, locations of residential and agricultural structures, roads, topography, and soil characteristics. Ten water quality variables were sampled at three sampling points along Stone Creek each month for twelve months. Each water sampling point on Stone Creek represents successively larger nested watersheds, which increase from 345 ha, to 2,040 ha, to 6,250 ha. Land-use patterns differ within each watershed, and water sampling data demonstrate significant spikes in turbidity downstream from exurban residential sites. Multivariate statistical analysis is used to quantify the relative effects of different land use patterns on water quality at three cumulative spatial extents. With exurban residential development predicted to increase on the southern Cumberland Plateau, we evaluate the relative effect of this land-use on a valuable ecosystem service, water quality.
Session I-B
I-CFamily Forest Owners (moderated by Brett Butler)
A Brief History of Forest Ownership in the United States
Brett J. Butler
USDA Forest Service
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Land ownership is a major factor influencing the state of the modern landscape. This presentation will outline the major events and forces affecting forest ownership in the United States from colonial through modern times. Initial Euro-American settlement and ownership patterns in the eastern U.S. were related to the needs of the resource, largely agricultural, based economies and their heavy reliance on waterways for transportation and mill power. These early patterns are still observable on the modern landscapes. Similar patterns were observable in the early Euro-American settlement patterns of the western U.S., but the role of railroads and the federal government had much more profound effects. The increasing value of forest land and the changing structure of the forest industry are large forces influencing modern ownership patterns including the conversion of forest land to residential or commercial uses and the proliferation of timber investment management organizations. The historical patterns of forest ownership in the U.S. are important for understanding the current landscape and for assessing likely futures.
Session I-C
Family Forest Owners: A Diverse Group with Diversified Objectives
Indrajit Majumdar, Lawrence D. Teeter, and Brett Butler
Auburn University and USDA Forest Service
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Who owns the forest? Ownership patterns have changed dramatically over the last 20 years, with Industry selling most of its holdings to timber investment management organizations (TIMOs) and real estate investment trusts (REITs) and individuals parceling their holdings to more, smaller ownerships. These new owners do not have the same motivations as the former owners due to changes in the economic landscape, population pressures from expanding cities and reduced reliance on the land to provide basic income needs (for smaller landowners). In this nationwide study on family forest owner objectives and attitudes towards their stewardship goals, we test the hypothesis that that family forest landowners form a heterogeneous group with differing motivations and goals for forest management, and that even when they face the same market environment their actions differ. Based on the responses to attitude type questions in the National Woodland Owner Survey (NWOS) that emphasized the perceived importance of various benefits for owning their forestland, groups of landowners with similar motivations to manage their forestland were identified and characterized.
Session I-C
Understanding and Reaching Family Forest Owners: Lessons from Social Marketing Research
Mary Tyrrell, Brett Butler, and Geoff Feinberg
Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and Project Coordinator, Sustaining Family Forests
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How can we communicate with family forest owners to help them be good forest stewards and ultimately keep their land as forest? These are the questions being addressed by the Sustaining Family Forests Initiative (SFFI), a collaborative project involving government, forest industry, NGO, certification system, landowner, and academic groups. The specific objective of the SFFI is to provide credible, useful information for those who wish to create a climate in which forest owners can easily find the information and services they desire to help them conserve and manage their land. The USDA Forest Service National Woodland Owner Survey (NWOS) serves as the empirical backbone for this initiative, providing critical information on forest owner demographics, attitudes, and behavior. In a marked departure from traditional analyses of landowner survey data, social marketing techniques were applied to increase our understanding family forest owners. The result is a "prime prospect" analysis, which can be used to develop communication tools for foresters and others trying to reach and serve family forest owners.