Resident and user support for urban natural areas restoration practices

Gobster, Paul H.; Floress, Kristin; Westphal, Lynne M.; Watkins, Cristy; Vining, Joanne; Wali, Alaka

doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2016.09.025

Cited by 14 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 62 publications

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“…One potential explanation is that respondents felt that, in time, public acceptance would increase as people become more familiar with pine barrens and their management. To some extent, this is consistent with previous research on fire acceptance (Gobster et al 2016) and is the goal of most conservation education programs (Derek Scasta et al 2015). A more likely explanation, however, is that the specter of other challenges such as invasive species and maintaining adequate budgets to finance restoration programs simply outweighed concerns for social issues.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Understanding the key characteristics and challenges of pine barrens restoration: insights from a Delphi survey of forest land managers and researchers

Gobster

Schneider

Floress

et al. 2020

Restoration Ecology

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Pine barrens are open‐canopy ecological communities once prevalent on sandy soils across the northern Great Lakes Region of the United States and Canada, though fire suppression and plantation forestry have now reduced them to a few isolated areas. Efforts to restore pine barrens are underway on some public lands, but lack of knowledge on the social and ecological issues and challenges that affect these projects impedes fuller progress. As a precursor to designing a public preference survey for pine barrens restoration, we sought input from those with expert knowledge about pine barrens. Using a three‐round modified Delphi survey, forest land managers and researchers identified the key characteristics of pine barrens and important current and future management challenges. Key characteristics were related to fire, landscape structure, plant and animal species, soils, and social themes. Current and future challenges were related to landscape, invasive species, social, economic, climate change, and science themes. Four social issues (education, fire acceptance, fire risk, aesthetics) were rated among the top current challenges but none of them maintained prominence as future challenges. Potential explanations for this shift are that the experts felt these social concerns would be resolved in time or that other issues, such as development pressures and budgets for carrying out restoration, would become greater future challenges. Our approach can be used by managers and researchers to better understand the ecosystems they seek to restore and to communicate with public stakeholders about restoration efforts.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Understanding the key characteristics and challenges of pine barrens restoration: insights from a Delphi survey of forest land managers and researchers

Gobster

Schneider

Floress

et al. 2020

Restoration Ecology

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“…We administered our survey to young biology students but cannot help wondering what the outcomes would have been with a broader group of people. We hypothesize a similar distribution of utilitarian and nonutilitarian attitudes with regard to ecological restoration across gender, age, and social variables (Gobster et al ). Our survey assessed attitudes toward a hypothesized restoration project and indicated the willingness of people to adapt their behavior for utilitarian and nonutilitarian reasons.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 95%

Utilitarian and nonutilitarian valuation of natural resources: a game‐theoretical approach

Swart

Zevenberg

2017

Restoration Ecology

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Ecological services such as food, fresh water, fuel, minerals, and flood control-to name only a few-are essential conditions for human well-being. Many of the areas that provide such services-wetlands, coastal areas, and deserts-are common pool resources, which are characterized by nonexcludability and subtractability that makes them vulnerable to collective action problems such as the prisoner's dilemma, where individual and collective interests collide and ultimately result in overexploitation and degradation. Damaged areas that provide ecological services are increasingly recognized as targets for ecological restoration. However, restored areas run the risk of backsliding to the previous state if their common pool characteristics are ignored. Collective action problems are often analyzed from a game-theoretical perspective that usually assumes rational, self-interested individuals, who do not take collective and nonutilitarian perspectives into account. However, people do not value natural resources just for utilitarian reasons but also because of ethical nonutilitarian ones. This paper develops a multiple-actor game-theoretical approach to one's "value achievement" by taking into account both utilitarian and nonutilitarian perspectives. It demonstrates that someone's value achievement is contingent on choices made by others and that considering nonutilitarian perspectives may avoid the prisoner's dilemma. Accordingly, this model was empirically tested and confirmed by a survey among life sciences and biology students by presenting them a hypothetical case of a restored natural area. Based on these results, it is argued that emphasizing nonutilitarian considerations may be an important additional strategy in conservation and restoration projects.

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“…Cessation of fire has affected vegetation composition and wildlife use of grasslands throughout the study area (Kirsch and Kruse 1973) and beyond. In order to maintain grassland integrity globally, we need a focused effort to characterize and address how human perceptions of fire and the effects of prescribed fire management are affecting human prescribed fire management decisions (Gobster et al 2016, Hurst et al 2017, including decisions surrounding the seasonality, frequency, and intensity of prescribed fire management.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Seasonality of prescribed fire weather windows and predicted fire behavior in the northern Great Plains, USA

et al. 2019

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Background: Prescribed fire is an important management practice used to control woody encroachment and invasive species in grasslands. To use this practice successfully, managers must understand the seasonal windows within which prescribed fire can be applied and how fire behavior could potentially vary among these windows. To characterize prescribed fire windows within the northern Great Plains of North America, we collected data from 20 remote weather stations positioned across North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota, USA, from station inception to 2015. We performed an hourly analysis for each station to determine if air temperature (2 to 43°C), relative humidity (25 to 80%), and wind speed (6.44 to 24.12 km h − 1) conditions were within acceptable ranges for at least six contiguous precipitation-free hours from 0800 to 1800 h. We summarized acceptable conditions over five half-season windows and then used the Rothermel fire spread equation to simulate fire behavior within these half-season windows based on average, minimum, and maximum conditions for seasonally appropriate live herbaceous to fine dead fuel ratios. Results: While the number of acceptable prescribed fire days did not change from early spring (21 March) to early fall (6 November), the number of acceptable days for conducting spring fires decreased and the number of acceptable days for conducting late summer to early fall fires increased over the study period. The change in spring acceptability reflected an increase in the number of days with air temperatures below acceptable minimum temperature and outside of acceptable wind conditions to conduct operations. Predicted rate of fire spread was highest and most sensitive to the season of the year, fuel curing status, and site invasion status when fire spread was simulated at the upper end of acceptable wind speed and at the lower end of fuel moisture conditions. Conclusions: Prescribed fire planning needs to take into account the timeframe during which fire windows exist within a year, and how these conditions affect fire behavior. In the northern Great Plains, there is ample opportunity for grassland managers to use summer and fall prescribed fires, and managers should expect to get variable fire behavior results when prescribed fires are applied in more extreme conditions throughout the year.

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Resident and user support for urban natural areas restoration practices

Cited by 14 publications

References 62 publications

Understanding the key characteristics and challenges of pine barrens restoration: insights from a Delphi survey of forest land managers and researchers

Understanding the key characteristics and challenges of pine barrens restoration: insights from a Delphi survey of forest land managers and researchers

Utilitarian and nonutilitarian valuation of natural resources: a game‐theoretical approach

Seasonality of prescribed fire weather windows and predicted fire behavior in the northern Great Plains, USA

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