You are here

Harvard Forest >

Harvard Forest Symposium Abstract 2012

  • Title: Conservation Awareness and landscape change
  • Primary Author: David Kittredge (University of Massachusetts - Amherst )
  • Abstract:

    Forests provide a vast array of important ecosystem services and public benefits, including carbon sequestration, wood products, clean water, biodiversity, and rural tourism. Fragmentation, parcelization, and land use conversion are reducing the number of non-industrial private forest acres, increasing the number of owners, and complicating the future of these landscapes. The average age of a landowner is over 60 years, and in the eastern United States, landscapes are dominated by private family ownership. The coming years will see an unprecedented shift in land ownership as the current cohort of owners ages and land is either passed to the next generation, or conveyed through the marketplace. The cumulative effect of the independent decisions landowners make about the management and protection of their land will greatly influence the future of the forests in the eastern United States and the ecosystem services they continue to provide. Therefore, one of the keys to conserving these forests is ensuring that these critical decisions made by tens of thousands of private families and individuals are informed by conservation, and not reactive to immediate need. A number of the press and pulse disturbances (e.g., fragmentation, parcelization, land use change) identified in the LTER Decadal Plan are driven by individual landowners and their decisions that translate into behaviors, which in turn cumulatively influence biotic structure (e.g., tree species composition following harvest, habitat connectivity, extent of interior forest) and ecosystem function (e.g., hydrology). New results suggest the importance of social factors influencing the likelihood of harvest (i.e., a stand/ecosystem-level disturbance) at a landscape scale (Butler et al in press).



    On the basis of prior study, we have developed a Conservation Awareness Index (CAI) to estimate landowners’ abilities to make informed, forest conservation decisions. In concept, it is modeled after the Consumer Confidence Index (The Conference Board: http://www.conference-board.org/economics/ConsumerConfidence.cfm ) that gauges people's belief in the strength of their financial circumstances. Sixteen simple questions in the CAI assess awareness, knowledge, and experience with a variety of conservation tools or activities (e.g., conservation easements, timber harvest, current use property taxation, and estate planning). To date, we have tested and deployed CAI with over 1,000 private woodland owners in 24 different Massachusetts communities to estimate relative landowner conservation awareness.



    Previous research in Massachusetts has identified the variation in ownership size and distribution (Kittredge et al 2008), as well as in owner attitude (Finley and Kittredge 2006, Belin et al 2005, Rickenbach and Kittredge 2009) and likelihood of participating in ecosystem-based management programs (Finley et al 2006), conservation easements (Levert et al 2009), and carbon sequestration programs (Fletcher et al 2009). Analysis of twenty years of timber harvest records throughout the state enabled a comparison of landowner attitudes towards harvest with their documented behaviors (i.e., though they profess disinterest in harvesting attitudinally, private owners are not opposed to harvest and often do so, frequently without professional guidance; McDonald et al 2006). More recently, landowner social networks were explored as a source of information prior to decision-making about easements and harvest (Kittredge et al in review). Preliminary results suggest peer landowners and so-called "locals" (i.e., weak ties) are important sources of trusted information for woodland owners, more so than family members and often paid professionals. On the basis of this improved understanding of the attitudes of private landowners (i.e., individual agents of landscape change/ disturbance), we propose to more directly investigate their conservation awareness and decision-making ability through the CAI, and importantly, link estimated conservation awareness to behavior. This linkage between CAI and behavior will enable landscape change models and scenario estimation to incorporate likelihood and nature of human-induced disturbance.





    On the basis of our work with CAI to date, we are pursuing these two questions in particular:

    • At a smaller social scale of a family/ extended-family unit, how does conservation awareness vary (e.g., between generations, by gender)?



    • What is the relationship between conservation awareness estimated by CAI, and documented behaviors / decision-making made by landowners (both individuals and aggregate family units)? Do people with high Conservation Awareness actually behave accordingly, or are there circumstances where High Conservation Awareness might be trumped by other circumstances, and not translate to conservation-oriented behavior?



    We will use mail surveys of randomly chosen landowners in selected communities to define the baseline conservation awareness for landowners and pilot communities in the HFR study area and neighboring areas. We will sample owners who have made a decision about their land in the past 6 months (though it is admittedly possible they have become more aware in the process). We will use structured interviews of family members to explore conservation awareness at the scale of family units and between generations.

  • Research Category: Conservation and Management