Landowner behavior can determine the success of conservation strategies for ecosystem migration under sea-level rise

Field, Christopher R.; Dayer, Ashley A.; Elphick, Chris S.

doi:10.1073/pnas.1620319114

Cited by 46 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 51 publications

(49 reference statements)

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“…Another important question is, how will the actions of FFOs feedback on the spread of invasive forest insects? Addressing this question requires a coupled natural‐human systems‐based perspective (Field, Dayer, & Elphick, ; Knight, Cowling, Difford, & Campbell, ) because, while pest infestations induce human impacts on the natural system, the natural system, in turn, then evolves from the human‐impacted natural system (Meurisse, Rassati, Hurley, Brockerhoff, & Haack, ). Our typology lends itself naturally to coupled human‐tree‐insect modelling, which is the next stage of our team's research.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Landowner functional types to characterize response to invasive forest insects

et al. 2019

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Invasive forest insects can induce tree mortality in two ways: (a) by directly harming trees; or (b) by influencing forest owners to pre‐emptively harvest threatened trees. This study investigates forest owners’ intentions to harvest trees threatened by invasive insects. Our first objective is to identify and characterize agent functional types (AFTs) of family forest owners in the northeastern United States using a set of contingent behaviour questions contained in a mail survey. We establish AFTs as a form of dimension reduction, effectively casting landowners into a typology in which each type (AFT) has distinct probabilities of tree harvesting in response to forest insects. Our analysis identifies three functional types of landowners: ‘Cutters’ (46% of respondents; high intent to harvest trees impacted by invasive forest insects), ‘Responsive Cutters’ (42% of respondents; intent sensitive to insect impact severity), and ‘Non‐cutters’ (12% of respondents; low intent to cut). Our second objective is to model AFT membership to predict the distribution of AFTs across the landscape. Predictors are chosen from a set of survey, geographic and demographic features. Our best AFT‐prediction model has three predictor variables: parcel size (hectares of forest), geographical region, and town‐level forested fraction. Application of the model provides a high‐resolution probability distribution of AFTs across the landscape. By coupling human and insect behaviour, our results allow for holistic assessments of how invasive forest insects disturb forests, inclusive of the management response to these pests. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Landowner functional types to characterize response to invasive forest insects

et al. 2019

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“…This cost proxy has been used to develop cost estimates for large-scale planning based on return on investment for the USA (Withey et al 2012). We estimated the proportion of landowners in each town who would be likely to sell their properties to a conservation organization for fair market value using data on behavioral intentions from a survey of >3000 landowners in the migration zone (Field et al 2017a). We quantified spatial variation in the proportion of landowners who would be likely to sell using a Bayesian logistic regression model with spatial random effects by town.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying the return on investment of social and ecological data for conservation planning

Field

Elphick

2019

Environ. Res. Lett.

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The interdisciplinary nature of conservation problems is increasingly being incorporated into research, raising fundamental questions about the relative importance of the different types of knowledge and data. Although there has been extensive research on the development of methods and tools for conservation planning, especially spatial planning, comparatively little is known about the relative importance of ecological versus non-ecological data for prioritization, or the likely return on investment of incorporating better data. We demonstrate a simple approach for (1) quantifying the sensitivity of spatial planning results to different ecological and non-ecological data layers, and (2) estimating the potential gains in efficiency from incorporating additional data. Our case study involves spatial planning for coastal squeeze, a process by which development blocks coastal ecosystems from moving landward in response to sea-level rise. We show that incorporating spatial data on landowners' likelihood of selling had little effect on identifying relative priorities but drastically changed the outlook for whether conservation goals could be achieved. Better data on the costs of conservation actions had the greatest potential to improve the efficiency of spatial planning, in some cases generating more than an order of magnitude greater cost savings compared to ecological data. Our framework could be applied to other systems to guide the development of spatial planning and to identify general rules of thumb for the importance of alternative data sources for conservation problems in different socio-ecological contexts.

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“…Voluntary conservation actions may not have sufficient public support, especially when program goals conflict with social expectations or the need for change is uncertain. Weak correlations often exist between behavioral intentions for management or conservation actions, and a wide range of beliefs and attitudes (Cook, Hall, & Larson, 2011;Field, Dayer, & Elphick, 2017;Larson, Cook, Strawhacker, & Hall, 2010). In some cases, rebate programs may have subsidized so-called free-riders, or residents who were likely to replace lawns anyway (Addink, 2005).…”

Section: Existing Studies Of Urban Turf Replacementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating the effects of turf-replacement programs in Los Angeles

Pincetl¹,

Gillespie

Pataki

et al. 2019

Landscape and Urban Planning

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Water utilities incentivize turf replacement to promote water conservation, but the effects of such programs have received limited evaluations. In 2014, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD) undertook an unprecedented investment to incentive turf replacement throughout Southern California in response to a serious Statewide drought. MWD devoted $350 million to the program, resulting in more than 46,000 rebate payments (25,000 in Los Angeles County) to remove 15.3 million square meters of turf. The program implementation provided a unique opportunity to address research gaps on turf replacement implementation. We analyzed socioeconomic and spatial trends of program participants and assessed landscape changes from turf replacement using a random sample of properties (4% of LA County participants in 2014-16). Specifically, we used a novel and cost-effective approach Google Earth Street View to characterize landscapes in front yards and created a typology of land cover types. Results showed: post-replacement landscapes had a diversity of land cover typesdiverse yards with several land cover types, as well as more homogenous yards with a single land cover such as woodchips, bare soil, gravel, and artificial turf. Analysis also indicated some evidence of "neighborhood adoption" effects. We describe the need for longitudinal studies to understand long-term effects of turf replacement and associated water use, and suggest that water utilities should also evaluate results in backyards, which requires site visits. This study provides a novel contribution that can be replicated over space and time to further knowledge of turf replacement program implementations and evaluation. Rosales, 2004; Sovocool et al., 2006), (2) changes in land cover and the composition of plant species after replacing turf (Agthe et al., 1986; Sovocool & Morgan, 2005), (3) socio-demographic trends in program participation, (4) social preferences of implemented (and presumably water conserving) landscapes on the part of both residents and

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Landowner behavior can determine the success of conservation strategies for ecosystem migration under sea-level rise

Cited by 46 publications

References 51 publications

Landowner functional types to characterize response to invasive forest insects

Landowner functional types to characterize response to invasive forest insects

Quantifying the return on investment of social and ecological data for conservation planning

Evaluating the effects of turf-replacement programs in Los Angeles

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