Delimiting communities in the Pacific Northwest.

Abstract

The paper presents an approach for delimiting communities in the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP) region of the Pacific Northwest that responds to the need to assess impacts and issues associated with broad-scale ecosystem management. Census block groups are aggregated to provide an alternative to more commonly used geographic delimitations of communities, specifically census places. With the block group aggregation approach, census data can be applied to almost 1.5 million more people in the NWFP region than would be represented by using census places. The delimitation of community boundaries is intended to facilitate future research on understanding and characterizing conditions, structures, and change. Factors to consider in conducting social science research at the small scale are discussed. Ways in which communities have been defined for social assessments and monitoring are identified. The influence of data availability on determining the unit of analysis and research focus at the small scale is discussed.

Forest Management Policy, Amenity Migration, and Community Well-Being in the American West: Reflections from the Northwest Forest Plan

“…To see how the six indicators of the socioeconomic well-being index differed for communities by location (see below), we compared means, using two-sample t-tests, assuming unequal variance. Donoghue (2003) and Donoghue and Sutton (2006) provide more information about the socioeconomic wellbeing measure.…”

“…These proportions were used as multipliers for 2000 socioeconomic data so that these data approximated the same 1,314 community boundaries defined by aggregating the 1990 block groups. More information about defining the community-level unit of analysis and the census block group aggregation process is available in Donoghue (2003) and Donoghue and Sutton (2006).…”

“…We aggregated 7,776 block groups (the smallest census geography for which all socioeconomic data are available) from the 1990 census into 1,314 nonmetropolitan communities that represent all people who reside there (Donoghue 2003).…”

Northwest Forest Plan--the first 10 years (1994-2003): socioeconomic monitoring of the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest and five local communities.

“…Case-study communities associated with the OWNF were chosen on the basis of a number of criteria. The monitoring team delineated 1,314 nonmetropolitan communities in the Plan area by aggregating census block groups (BGAs) according to several characteristics, such as school district boundaries, county lines, and transportation corridors (Donoghue 2003). The team identified a sampling frame of communities that included all of the BGAs whose polygons lay, at least partially, within a 5-mile radius of OWNF boundaries east of the Cascade Range crest.…”

“…Chapter 2: Trends in Socioeconomic Benefits From the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest, 1990-2003 10 1 9 7 8 1 9 8 0 1 9 8 2 1 9 8 4 1 9 8 6 1 9 8 8 1 9 9 0 1 9 9 2 1 9 9 4 1 9 9 6 1 9 9 8 2 0 0 0 2 0 0 2 1 9 9 4 1 9 9 6 1 9 9 8 2 0 0 0 2 0 0 2 1 9 9 5 1 9 9 7 1 9 9 9 2 0 0 1 2 0 0 3 Fiscal year Timber offered (million board feet) Figure 4-Volume of timber offered for sale on the Okanogan andWenatchee National Forests, 1994-2003. Straight line is the linear regression.…”