Community and landscape change in southeast Alaska

Abstract

Since the early 1970s, social science research has addressed issues concerning the nature and distribution of values and uses associated with natural resources. In part, this research has tried to improve our understanding of interconnections between resource management and social and cultural change on the Tongass National Forest in southeast Alaska. In 1997, scientists at the Pacific Northwest Research Station (PNW) initiated a number of social science studies in response to information gaps identified while developing the Tongass Land Management Plan. Results presented here summarize findings from studies of traditional ecological knowledge, subsistence use of natural resources, tourism trends and the effects of tourism on communities, and social acceptability of alternative timber harvest practices. Management implications are discussed along with suggestions for further study. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Perceptions of landscape change in a rural British Columbia community

“…27-8) as some patterns of landscape evaluation are clear and broadly consistent with other forest landscape evaluation and social acceptability studies (Kruger, 2005). For instance, participant comments demonstrated that multiple factors are brought to bear in the evaluation of alternative landscape conditions.…”

“…Consistent with the broader field of social acceptability research (Kruger, 2005;Stankey, 1996;Schindler et al, 2002), participant appraisals addressed the perceived balance of impacts associated with the different landscape conditions. In effect, the participants engaged in a complex evaluation of multiple consequences when evaluating the simulated conditions.…”

“…The broader focus of this research is not new. Prior studies have investigated stakeholder conceptions of acceptable landscape change (Kruger, 2005;Shindler et al, 2002;Stankey, 1996), particularly within forest dependent rural communities. In addition to documenting conceptions of acceptable landscape change among a sample of aboriginal as well as non-aboriginal participants, the following study differs in one other key respect.…”

Depicting community perspectives: repeat photography and participatory research as tools for assessing environmental services in Sagarmatha National Park, Nepal

“…Consistent with perception research in human geography (Hay 1998;Kruger 2005;Shindler et al 2002), participants associated multiple values with their environment and made complex evaluations of multiple impacts of change to specific ES. It was difficult to gauge whether the participants carried out multicriterion analysis.…”

Community tourism as practiced in the mountainous Qiang region of Sichuan Province, China — a case study in Zhenghe Village

“…In many cases of community tourism development, the elite become the main beneficiaries while few of the local residents participate or gain much profit from tourism (Pratiwi 2000). The results of Kruger's (2005) survey of the effects of tourism on three communities in Southeast Alaska proved that although the tourism industry can be 'the goose that lays the golden egg', it can also be a way of 'fouling one's own nest'. Campbell (1999) found that local community residents in Costa Rica gained limited benefits from tourism if they lacked knowledge about tourism development and if there was a lack of government planning and participation in the process.…”