Capturing Community Context of Human Response to Forest Disturbance by Insects: A Multi-Method Assessment

Abstract

The socioeconomic and environmental features of local places (community context) influence the relationship between humans and their physical environment. In times of environmental disturbance, this community context is expected to influence human perceptual and behavioral responses. Residents from nine Colorado communities experiencing a large outbreak of mountain pine beetles (Dendroctonus ponderosae) were surveyed in 2007. Multiple analytic methods including ordinary least squares regression and multilevel modeling techniques were used to evaluate a community-context conceptual model of factors influencing individual actions in response to forest disturbance by beetles. Results indicated that community biophysical and socioeconomic characteristics had important impacts on participation in beetle-related actions and influenced the relationships of individual-level variables in the conceptual model with beetle-related activities. Our findings have implications for natural resource management and policy related to forest disturbances, and for developing a methodology appropriate to measure the general community context of human-environment interactions.

How natural disturbance triggers political conflict: Bark beetles and the meaning of landscape in the Bavarian Forest

“…For this reason, the implementation of a management policy that integrates ecological, economic and social concerns must also be based on an understanding of the cultural meaning of landscape. This cultural meaning varies from locality to locality, underscoring the importance of taking the local context seriously (Qin and Flint, 2010). This is especially relevant considering that allowing or emulating natural disturbance is increasingly becoming a management model for protected areas under the paradigm of protecting ecological integrity and nonequilibrium processes (Dearden and Dempsey, 2004;Zimmerer, 2000).…”

“…It thus attempts to answer the call for research across different cultural, socio-economic as well as ecological local contexts (Huntington et al, 2006;Qin and Flint, 2010). More than looking at the same phenomenon in a different location, the case of the Bavarian Forest shows that the local cultural meaning of the forest landscape makes for a specific trajectory of conflict about the management of natural disturbance.…”

Changing Community Variations in Perceptions and Activeness in Response to the Spruce Bark Beetle Outbreak in Alaska

“…Comparative community analysis and community context studies are two interrelated streams of inquiry in community research. Community social scientists have employed a range of methods to capture community contextual effects, such as typology construction, multi-level modeling, social network analysis, qualitative comparative analysis, and typical statistical analyses involving context variables [22,26,45,111]. This study shows that while community contextual understanding provides an important backdrop for the comparison of community cases, longitudinal comparative community research can in turn enrich the depiction of varied community contexts.…”

“…In a similar vein, Qin and Flint [22] examined the community contextual nature of local responses to forest disturbance by mountain pine beetles in north-central Colorado. The results indicated that community biophysical and socioeconomic characteristics directly influenced local participation in community actions related to the beetle outbreak, while also adjusting the relationships of individual-level variables with beetle-related activeness.…”

“…Given the heterogeneity and dynamics of forest ecosystems, these community-level aspects of the human dimensions of forest disturbances are expected to vary across places and time as well. Additionally, diverse socioeconomic and biophysical situations of local places have been identified as important community contextual factors influencing environmental behaviors including participation in responses to forest insect disturbance and other conservation-related activities [20][21][22]. Nevertheless, few studies have examined the evolvement of community differences in reactions to environmental change or the changing effects of community context on environmental perceptions and actions.…”