Progress 04/01/16 to 03/31/21
Outputs
Target Audience:This project targeted mutliple academic and nonacademic audiences regarding community development strategies that would enhance rural economies as well as surrounding forestresources. We have made a series of presentations to interdisciplinary academic and policy outlets, and publishedpeer-reviewed publications, as well as summarizing findings for case study community residents in the form of a fact sheet of our key survey findings. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Zach Davis, University of Maine, undergraduate student in Ecology & Environmental Sciences Yelshaday Gebreselassie, University of Maine, MS student in Economics Both Yelsh and Zach helped with paper survey dissemination in Maine. Rachel Colello, James Madison University, undergraduate student in Sociology (interview data analysis and background research) Margaret Walrath, University of Connecticut, BS student then research assistant (survey implementation and data analysis) Michaela Poppick, University of Connecticut, BS student then research assistant (survey implementation and data analysis) How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?In Fall 2020, a fact sheet describing general survey results was sent to participants who indicated interest in receiving it. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Goal 1: Characterizing rural-forest based communities and their external stressors and shocks In prior published research (Morzillo et al., 2015; Van Berkel et al., 2018) we developed a working definition of rural-forest based communities. We refined this definition in this project as those communities in the 2010 Census with population greater than or equal to 500 and less than or equal to 15,000 and with 30 percent or more forest covered within a 100-mile radius (based on 2011 National Land Cover Data). We had hypothesized that these communities had all likely experienced some common and distinct external stressors and shocks over the last several decades. We compiled a large amount of socioeconomic, spatial and environmental data to examine distinct trajectories of long-term change, including the extent to which communities had reorganized along with structural shifts in their regional economic base. We focused our data analysis on describing trajectories of change and assessing the potential significance of human and physical resource base, connectivity, and social adaptability attributes on these outcomes. We documented changes in and attributes of 14, 830 US rural, forest-based communities and 3, 109 contiguous US counties by compiling and integrating secondary data describing social and economic characteristics, land and water resources, location attributes, and infrastructure networks. While we assembled and analyzed secondary social-environmental data at both the community (i.e., county subdivision) and county scales, our work revealed gaps in and limitations of available community-scale social and economic data. County-scale data provide a solid foundation for describing regional trajectories, characteristics, and outcomes over space and time (1990 to 2015), yet have their own limitations, such as obscuring potentially important variation at the community-scale. A mail survey was completed in Winter 2019-2020 to collect data from residents regarding perspectives about the community in which they live, events that may have triggered major changes in their community, the economy of their community, relationships between their community and surrounding lands, social characteristics of their community, and background information and demographics. Survey data analysis is underway. One example of ongoing data analysis is compilation of responses about events that have triggered major changes in the communities from the perspective of respondents, and development of timelines to map those events. Responses are being compared between those who are long-term residents of the communities and those who have arrived in the community more recently. Goal 2: Characterizing trajectories of community reliance on ecosystem services While analysis of semi-structured interview data is ongoing, interviews have revealed a ubiquitous reliance on cultural forest ecosystem services (in the form of recreational and/or amenity value). Notably, this is true even for study communities where the local economy is not currently particularly recreation/amenity-based (such as in ME). In short, the presence of forests and the amenities they represent (such as trail systems and "camps") tends to be seen as a vital component of these communities even where no direct economic reliance on those amenities is apparent. At the same time, a reliance on provisioning ecosystem services in the form of timber/fiber/fuelwood production continues alongside the cultural role played by local forests, though generally to a significantly lesser degree than in the past; this is true even in the study community that most epitomizes a recreation/amenity based economic trajectory (WV). However, complicating these patterns of community reliance on forest ecosystems are issues around changes in access to forestland over time (generally brought about by shifts in land ownership) as well as concerns about forest health. However, views about the causes of poor forest health vary in interesting ways across cases; in some communities (e.g., NY) perceptions that poor forest health could be addressed by expanding timber harvests on public land are apparent, while in other communities (e.g., WV) concerns that forest health is being negatively impacted by too much cutting predominate. Goal 3: Linking forest-community interactions to community outcomes Informed by regional science studies of socio-economic change, we conducted empirical analyses of changes in population, employment, and poverty to explore the linkages between forest-community interactions and community outcomes. Specifically, we estimated reduced form cross-sectional growth equations for employment, population, and population in poverty as a function of resource base, connectivity, and social adaptability characteristics to examine potential differences in outcomes, characteristics, and relationships between rural forested regions and rural non-forested regions. Our work emphasizes the heterogeneity of rural areas and challenges binary narratives of rural versus urban regions, and calls attention to differences between rural areas, such as variation in rural forested and agricultural regions. Population, employment, and poverty grew at faster rate in rural forested counties than in rural non-forested counties from 1990 to 2015. Further, we detected significant differences in the associations between historical economic sector employment shares and changes in population, employment, and poverty in rural forested and nonforested regions. These findings continue to drive our interests in the varied experiences of rural forested communities and regions and the changing nature and implications of forest dependence. To characterize the decline trajectory (Morzillo et al.), we relied on sub-county data. Current analysis utilizing county level data, necessary for detailing employment characteristics, is too coarse to accurately represent community experiences in forested areas in transition. Currently in prep is a paper assessing the adequacy of measures of distress, typically operationalized in the literature as population decline. Rather than relying on one metric or coarse data, we explore the occurrence of multiple proxies of distress/decline across the U.S. and map those to the conditions from case-study communities and known areas. Goal 4: Develop policy priorities We compiled a summary of direct and indirect policies in each of the states in our study area that impact forests, elucidating the ongoing interactions among policy, economic, environmental and infrastructural changes and forest outcomes. These results were published in Munroe et al. (2018).
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2022
Citation:
Crandall; Bell, Colocousis, Morzillo, Munroe. Measures of economic decline in rural forest-located communities (in prep), Journal of Regional Analysis and Policy, December 2021
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2022
Citation:
Crandall; Bell, Colocousis, Morzillo, Munroe. Public lands as opportunities and challenges for rural development (in preparation for submission to Society & Natural Resources) December 2021
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2021
Citation:
Crandall; Bell, Colocousis, Morzillo, Munroe. Rural forested landscapes, economic change, and rural development (in preparation for Growth and Change, October 2021)
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2022
Citation:
Crandall; Bell, Colocousis, Morzillo, Munroe. Perspectives of significant shock events in rural forested communities (in preparation for Journal of Rural Studies. September 2021)
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2022
Citation:
Crandall; Bell, Colocousis, Morzillo, Munroe. Forest dependencies and the development and well-being of rural forested regions (in preparation for submission to Forest Policy and Economics, September 2021)
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Progress 04/01/19 to 03/31/20
Outputs
Target Audience:
Nothing Reported
Changes/Problems:We will request a second no-cost extension in order to complete our data analysis that is ongoing. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Undergraduate and graduate students have been involved in all aspects of the project. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?
Nothing Reported
What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We will continue to complete database of components of decline, including matching geographic units when needed. Then we will finalize an index using principal components analysis, testingdifferent time spans, which will be the basis for a manuscript to a journal. These final decline results will also be shared with communities in each of our study areas. We have surveys still arriving. Arrival of surveys and non-response follow-ups likely to extend beyond current project end date. We are ontinue data entry (employing numerous undergraduate students) for both survey and non-response survey. Analysis of survey data (plus everything that everyone else on project is doing), presentation of results, preparation of manuscripts. Create summary of results to send to participants and stakeholders.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Objective 1. We continue to refine our secondary data analysis for the entire coterminous U.S. In this project year, we conducted an exhaustive literature review on the various definitions of "distress" fur rural areas, to construct an index / measure to use to compare rural forested communities to non-forested rural communities and metropolitan areas. We have compiled a dataset for 1990, 2000 and 2010, and also experimented going back to 1970, 1980 and 2015. The shifts in definitions in Census county subdivisions over time make this challenging. Objective 2. All interviews to date (N=56) have been transcribed and imported into the qualitative data analysis program NVivo. We are continuing to refine the coding scheme after initial passes utilizing an initial, deductive scheme based on our conceptual framework yielded preliminary findings focused on commonalities and differences between study communities representing different trajectories. As emergent themes were added, the preexisting scheme became highly complex to the point of diminishing utility and further refinement became necessary. We continue to rework the coding scheme to more productively reflect both our initial deductive and inductive approaches to the interview data. We continue to code the data and record findings with a particular emphasis on several key dimensions of comparison across the study regions and/or trajectories which include: · Predominant forms of connectivity and their significance in development · Differences in the meanings of remoteness and isolation and how they are perceived in terms of challenges and opportunities · Perceptions of the role of public lands in development, and how they may pose challenges, opportunities, and/or vulnerabilities for development · Perceptions of forest dependence and health, including change over time · Overall levels of social adaptability · Perceptions of local power structures · Perceptions of key issues facing communities Objective 3. We have constructed and implemented survey to collect data from residents about community change, current conditions, and future opportunities. Data collection is ongoing - more than 400 completed surveys have been returned thus far. We are preparing to send a third (one final) abbreviated survey to residents who have not yet responded.
Publications
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Accepted
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Colocousis, C.R., A.T. Morzillo, M.S. Crandall, K.P. Bell, D.K., Munroe. August 2019. Relationships between post-shock trajectories of change and local characteristics in rural forest-located communities. Rural Sociological Society Annual Meeting. Richmond, VA.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Accepted
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Bell, Kathleen P., Mindy Crandall, Darla K. Munroe, Anita Morzillo, & Chris Colocousis
Rural forested landscapes, economic change, and rural development. 2019 North American Meetings of RSAI, Pittsburgh, PA. 15 November 2019.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
Crandall, M.S. 2020. Trends & trajectories in rural communities: What we know and what we dont know. January 10, 2020. Rural Voices for Conservation Coalition Annual Meeting, January 14, 2020 Silverton, Oregon
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Progress 04/01/18 to 03/31/19
Outputs
Target Audience:
Nothing Reported
Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Maine: a graduate student in Economics helped with the transcription of interviews and gained training in qualitative methods. New York: two undergraduate students helped with transcription of interviews, gaining training in qualitative methods. A third undergraduate student compiled GIS files for spatial evaluation, mapping, and related analysis. In Ohio, two undergraduate students have assisted with the transcription of interviews and historical research. West Virginia: One undergraduate assisted with transcription of interviews and historical research using secondary sources, compiled GIS files for spatial evaluation, mapping, and related analysis. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?
Nothing Reported
What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Complete the primary and secondary data analyses and advance policy insights to improve support of rural communities. We will move ahead with interview data analysis to systematically examine the relationships between developmental trajectories and perceptions of local patterns of change, challenges, and opportunities.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
1. External stressors and shocks: Compiled database of national economic stressors and shocks to provide context and inform quantitative and qualitative research. 2. Characterizing trajectories: Continued refining our multi-scale analysis of forest-community interactions and reliance on ecosystem service provisioning. Continued to test alternative modeling and analysis approaches for (1) documenting the trajectories of approximately 14,830 rural forested communities nationally and (2) capturing well processes happening at higher (e.g., county-scale, regional economic conditions) and lower levels (county-subdivision scale, community conditions). We assembled databases describing economic activity/employment at the county and county-subdivision scales over time and developed approaches for mapping transitions in such measures to community trajectories. Our data analysis efforts are based on secondary data documenting socio-economic conditions from 1980 through 2015 at county and county subdivision levels across the conterminous US. Empirical analyses of economic transformations offer continued support for our interest in exploring multi-scale frameworks to better reflect community trajectories and outcomes. We continued to refine our empirical representation of our conceptual economic trajectories (Morzillo et al. 2015), with a particular focus on distinguishing declining (and prosperous) communities from communities in transition. Based on an updated literature review, we modified our measure of decline and further tested our conceptual framework, advancing new insights that our hypothesized three community trajectories (decline, amenity transformation, and new production transformation) may not be mutually exclusive but rather layered. 3. Linking trajectories of forest-community interactions to community outcomes: Continued to develop our assessment of forest-community interactions using quantitative and qualitative research methods. Updated our secondary data describing community outcomes and key attributes describing forest-community interactions (resource base, connectivity, and social adaptability) from 1980 through 2015 at county and county subdivision levels across the conterminous US. Linked empirical assessments of community outcomes and economic trajectories to document forest-community interactions using quantitative research methods. Continued to make advances in primary data collection and analysis. Collected and coded 56 key-informant interviews in 11 communities in OH, ME, WV, and NY to identify key themes regarding how communities are responding to economic shocks, and the roles that forests have played. Interview data analysis: We imported all interview transcripts into the qualitative data analysis program NVivo, and created an initial, deductive coding scheme based on our conceptual framework. An initial pass through the interview data yielded a preliminary set of findings focused on commonalities and differences between study communities representing different trajectories. The deductive coding scheme was applied to the interview data on these initial passes. At the same time, emergent themes were added, yielding a detailed coding scheme that reflects both deductive and inductive approaches to the data. Because of conceptual between pre-existing and emergent codes, we are currently refining the coding scheme to provide a more streamlined approach to interview data analysis that preserves our ability to query the data in terms of both initial categories of interest and these new, unanticipated themes. 4. Policy priorities informed by place-based insights: These priorities are preliminary, but we report some emerging insights from the analysis to date. Commonalities across our four states include the need for stable jobs that pay a living wage; concerns about water quality; the ubiquity of recreation/amenity value of forests; connectivity in the form of trail networks; recreational access provided by public lands or large private landowners and changes in access over time; youth outmigration; poor internet access as a barrier to development; relatively open local power structures; and optimism about the future. Key differences across cases include: higher levels of social adaptability in T2 communities; some places being seen as remote, while others are seen as isolated; concerns about substance abuse being relatively high in Ohio; degradation of the local resource base being higher in Ohio and West Virginia than in Maine or New York; and varying perceptions of forest health from one region to another. Local land use policy plays an important role in perceptions of community characteristics.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Munroe, D. K., Crandall, M. S., Colocousis, C., Bell, K. P., & Morzillo, A. T. (2019). Reciprocal relationships between forest management and regional landscape structures: applying concepts from land system science to private forest management. Journal of Land Use Science, 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1080/1747423X.2019.1607914
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Colocousis, C.R., A.T. Morzillo, D.K. Munroe, K.P. Bell, M.S. Crandall. 2019. Economic shocks, trajectories of change, and place-based characteristics in rural forest-located communities. Southern Sociological Society Annual Meeting. April, Atlanta, GA.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Morzillo, A.T., C. Colocousis, K.P. Bell, M. Crandall, and D. Munroe. 2019. Landscape characteristics defining sustainability of rural forest-based communities. US Regional Association of the International Association for Landscape Ecology annual meeting. April, Fort Collins, CO
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Crandall, M.S., K.P. Bell, D.K. Munroe, A.T. Morzillo, and C.R. Colocousis. 2018. The condition of rural, forest-based communities following economic shocks. Society of American Foresters National Convention. October, Portland, OR.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Bell, K.P., M. Crandall., D.K. Munroe, A.T. Morzillo, and C. Colocousis. 2018. Rural forest-based communities, economic shocks, and economic trajectories. Agricultural and Applied Economics Association meeting. August, Washington, DC.
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Progress 04/01/17 to 03/31/18
Outputs
Target Audience:We have been presenting regularly at scientific conferences within our respective disciplines (geography, natural resources, agricultural economics, forest economics, forest policy) as well as speaking tointerdisciplinary communities (landscape ecology). Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The postdoctoral researcher from the first year of the grant worked on the project through July 2017. Undergraduate and graduate research assistants have been involved in the statistical data gathering and now in fieldwork, key informant interviews, and transcription of interviews throughout the project.? How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?In this reporting period, we submitted abstracts from the project to multiple academic conferences. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Between now and December 2018, we will continue to analyze the key informant interview data. We have developed a preliminary coding protocol based on our prior theoretical framework (Morzillo et al. 2015). We are expanding that framework in response to our community case studies, looking for commonalities and differences across communities, and developing further hypotheses to how we characterize and classify substantive typologies of economic change, and how those patterns map onto concrete forest outcomes. At the same time, econometric and statistical modeling will further refine the cluster and employment based definitions of community trajectories following shocks and the relationship between trajectory and community characteristics (connectivity, resource base, and social adaptability measures). In 2018, we will be developing an administering a mail survey that is based on the refined hypotheses from both the cluster analysis and key informant interviews, to uncover from a broader set of community residents and decision-makers how they see their future prospects for their local economies, their forest resources, and the relationships among these two systems.?
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Multivariate cluster analysis Objectives 1 and 2: We conducted an analysis of economic and social characteristics of 14,830 rural forested communities (defined as census county subdivisions with population between 500 and 15,000 and with greater than 30% forest cover within 100 miles) to assess patterns in employment changes and characterize how those patterns are associated with community outcomes. These communities represent 33% of the continental US land area, about 18% of the US population, and about 46% of the continental US forest cover. We used clustering techniques, specifically non-hierarchical K-means, to group our communities based on these changes in the percentage of employment by industry category for the time period 1990-2010. These analyses document key economic changes in rural, forest communities and initiate new thinking about how changes in employment of residents can lead to or be associated with different community outcomes. The communities in our sample experienced reductions in the percentage of residents employed in manufacturing; agriculture, forestry, fishing, hunting, and mining; retail trade; wholesale trade; and public administration. Conversely, these communities experienced, on average, increases in the percentage of residents employed in service industries, construction; and finance, insurance, and real-estate industries. The results of these analyses showed more nuances in broad community outcomes than strictlycontinued natural resource extraction, new amenity economies, or decline. In general, less desirable socioeconomic outcomes could be associated with greater shifts in employment away from manufacturing and into service industries. Data analysis has also explored various definitions of initial production based economies, as well as economic base following shocks (as proposed in Morzillo et. al. 2015). Employment data from 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, and 2010 was used and various measures of amenity, resource production, and other dependence were calculated and compared with the existing community definition. Interviews with community stakeholders Objective 3:We developed a semi-structured interview protocol for use in our community case studies. We have been conducting fieldwork and key informant interviews in 8 study communities since obtaining Human Subjects authorization in November 2017. We are conducting interviews in each of our respective study regions.In WV, we collected interviews (N=8) and secondary/historical data in three study communities (Davis, Thomas, and Parsons) located in Tucker County.In OH, the interviews (N=12) were conducted in three study communities (Glouster, New Straitsville and Logan) in two counties (Athen and Hocking).In Maine, 19 interviews were gathered from two study communities (Millinocket and East Millinocket) in northern Penobscot County. At this time roughly 40 interviews have been conducted. A new site may be added in southern New England.Interviews have thus far been conducted with residents working in community and county government,community economic development, major industries (food, tourism /outdoor recreation, forest management, and logging), small business owners/entrepreneurs, and the local nonprofit sector (including development, parks, housing, family services, libraries, and culture/arts). Interviews, transcription, and data analysis are ongoing. Morzillo, Anita T., et al. ""Communities in the middle": Interactions between drivers of change and place-based characteristics in rural forest-based communities."Journal of Rural Studies42 (2015): 79-90.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Under Review
Year Published:
2017
Citation:
Munroe, DK, M. Crandall, C. Colocousis, KP Bell and AT Morzillo. Feedbacks within land systems to integrate regional landscape structures and land-use decision making. Submitted to Journal of Land Use Science. In review.
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Progress 04/01/16 to 03/31/17
Outputs
Target Audience:
Nothing Reported
Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Work to date has provided significant training for both the undergraduate research assistant and postdoctoral researcher to date, including, reading and analyzing an interdisciplinary literature, constructing a spatial database for counties and county subdivisions, and using multivariate statistical techniques to analyze trajectories of change (research design and analysis). How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?
Nothing Reported
What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We have a team meeting scheduled in July 2017 to assemble the necessary research protocol for Objectives 3 and 4. We have begun to write academic papers from the analysis conducted this past year.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
We have been working on Objectives 1 and 2. We have reviewed 53 papers that examine "Communities in the Middle" in an effort to understand what factors lead to the different patterns of change for forested communities following disruptions. We define "communities in the middle" as County Subdivisions in the Conterminous United States with a total residential population between 500 and 15,000 and a forest cover within a 100 mile radius of its centroid of at least 30% of the total land. We have found that there are 14,830 county subdivisions in the United States that meet our criteria. We have collected data at the tract level, subdivision level, and county level in the form of spreadsheets, as well as raster datasets and shapefiles from which we have deduced subdivision and county level data fields. Our data come from numerous sources, especially government organizations. These include the US Census Bureau, the Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics Consortium (MRLC), Bureau of Economic Analysis, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Homeland Infrastructure Foundation-Level Data (HIFLD), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Energy Information Administration (EIA), the US Small Business Administration, US Forest Service, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and more. Our non-governmental data sources consist primarily of ArcGIS Online. Our analyses are of multiple scales. For county subdivision level data, we have built an econometric model using a stratified sample of 6,999 subdivisions. Using cluster analysis in Stata software, we have divided these sample forested communities into three pathways: "production-shock-decline," "production-shock-amenity," and "production-shock-(new) production". We have also identified possible driving factors that may lead to the different pathways of these forested communities by using One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). The identified driving factors fall into three categories, including Resource Base (such as the percentage of protected land), Connectivity (such as the distance to the nearest major city), and Social Adaptability (such as population diversity). We will continue to analyze data throughout the spring and summer of 2017. We will subsequently begin to conduct fieldwork for the six case study communities.
Publications
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