Progress 10/01/17 to 12/31/19
Outputs
Target Audience:Target audiences are: Academics, staff of government agencies and land trusts that hold conservation easements, landowner organizations. Changes/Problems:We had more difficulty identifying remote sensing products that would clearly answer our research questions than we expected, so we had to use products at a lower resolution. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?We trained three graduate students: -Alexey Kalinin, PhD in Agricultural and Resource Economics, 2019 -Alex Kazer, MS in Agroecology, expected 2020 -Zhiwei Ye, PhD in Environment and Resources, expected 2022 We trained Shelby Weidenkopf, an undergraduate in Wildlife Ecology, who coded easement documents and went on to do an independent study and honors thesis with Dr. Rissman on a landscape with a conservation easement that protects habitat for rare species. Rissman taught the graduate seminar Private Land Conservation in Fall 2019 which supported the objectives of this project including the role of conservation easements. It had an enrollment of 16 graduate students. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Outreach talks: Presented a webinar to the Midwest Land Trust Alliance, Can Permanence Require Adaptation? Adapting Conservation Easements to Climate Change, September 2019. Rissman, Adena R. Love and land: managing private lands for public good. Baraboo Range Preservation Association. Baraboo, WI. February, 2019. Once the analysis of interview transcripts is complete, an article detailing the study will be written and submitted for publication to Society and Natural Resources in order to share the findings with the broader research community. We also plan to finalize a professional document that will be shared with practitioners from easement holder organizations. This document will contain a summary of the literature that informed the study, lessons learned from the interviews, and a menu of recommendations and best practices gleaned from the research that they can apply to the stewardship of their own easements. Invited talks: -Rissman, Adena R. Adapting forest policy to social and environmental change. Oregon State University. June, 2019. -Rissman, Adena R. Adapting conservation policy and management to ecosystem dynamics and no-analog futures. Colorado State University. April, 2019. -Rissman, Adena R. Testing ideas about easements and landowners. Ducks Unlimited. Bismarck, North Dakota. July, 2019. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Our goals are to track the following aspects of conservation easements: Land cover and land use outcomes: determine the effects of CEs on land cover change, compared to unconserved properties. This is the overarching goal, and work was accomplished on the more specific items below to help achieve this overarching goal. 2) Policy terms: understand the use of CE policy terms (purposes and land use restrictions and the use of specific rules versus generic standards) and whether they impact land cover outcomes. A coding scheme was designed to code terms and conditions of easements. Conservation easements have diverse purposes, land use rights and restrictions, and provisions for monitoring, enforcement, and amendment. 3) Economic drivers: determine how different trajectories of landscape change, and the associated opportunity costs of landowners' land use decisions, have influenced CE effectiveness. We assembled spatial data on easement locations in Wisconsin and Montana. In Wisconsin, a number of land trusts would not share that data and we had to manually map them using legal descriptions from property deeds obtained from county recorder offices. All spatial data on easement locations in Montana was freely available. We designed and implemented a stratified sampling scheme to sample easements from high and low capacity organizations, across Wisconsin and Montana. The measure of growth was based on 1990 and 2010 block level census data. Block level data was used to apportion growth to townships. Township level changes in the number of housing units were used for easement sampling. Three hundred easements were sampled from Wisconsin. We compiled a database of all easements in Wisconsin, coding their spatial location to the township level. We calculated a measure of development pressure at the township level: % change in housing units between 1990 and 2010, using census block level data. We sampled easements from townships in the top tercile of development pressure, where the growth in housing units from 1990-2010 was greater than 35%. We stratified sampling by organizational capacity. High capacity organization had more than 2 full time employees. We obtained employee information from the 2015 Land Trust Alliance Census. For stratified sampling, the order of organizations in the sample, and the order of easements was randomized. Easements were then sampled separately from high and low capacity organizations, with 2 FTE equivalent employees used as the dividing line. Easements were sampled by organization, such that up to 15 easements could be included from a given land trust. The final sample consisted of 296 easements: 154 from low capacity orgs, 142 from high capacity orgs. National Park Service easements were excluded from sampling because the easement date was not available on their easements. Work is ongoing to sample and code easements from Montana. An experimental design was developed to examine determinants of easement location and to test how easements affect landcover change. The first stage of this design is to develop a development probability map at the PLSS quarter-quarter level, using landsat landcover change data. The second stage is to incorporate the development probability data as a predictor variable to examine determinants of easement locations. Specifically we want to understand if development pressure is an important driver of easement location. The third stage is to incorporate findings from stage 2 to identify counterfactual locations in the PLSS quarter-quarter space, that match observable characteristics of PLSS quarter quarters with easements. In the fourth stage, we will compare landcover change outcomes between PLSS quarter-quarters with easements and the counterfactual PLSS quarter quarters without easements, to examine the impact that easements have on landcover change. A model of easement location determinants was estimated using annual land cover change data created by other research team members. This model shows that urban development at the PLSS section level is a predictor of easement location. 4) Remote sensing: investigate the most effective and automated ways to process remotely sensed observations within and outside CEs that will allow rapid assessment across large areas. We developed an automated method utilizing Landsat's multitemporal dense time stack dataset (from USGS/NASA) to locate land cover change and identify the time of land cover change, especially the land conversion related to natural vegetation loss by monitoring vegetation growth dynamics over time. This was done at the 30m pixel level from Landsat imagery in the eastern US. LandTrendr (Kennedy et al., 2012) has been used as a baseline method to map land cover change at parcel level Waukesha County, WI. Its ability of change detection by remote sensing imagery is under investigation. How the map is summarized from pixel to parcel level to yield better result needs to be study as well. Meanwhile, the newly developed method will be used for comparison in the task of land cover change detection both at pixel level and parcel level. Based on an assumption (land cover changes monotonously), NLCD product can be used to cross-reference the mapping of land cover change. 5) Social relations: understand how current landowners and conservation employees perceive CEs, and understand how conservation organizations could navigate the social relations of stewardship (monitoring, service to landowners, enforcement of land use terms) with a particular focus on transitioning to "second generation" landowners. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 10 key informants (national issue experts, professionals, lawyers, and academics) to develop a broad-based understanding of emerging issues in CE stewardship and succession. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 11 easement holder organization staff in Wisconsin to determine organizational perspectives on easement stewardship and succession. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 17 successor landowners across Wisconsin to understand landowner perspectives on easement stewardship and succession.These landowners own parcels with easements held by four different organizations.These organizations represent a mix of public agencies and land trusts, as well as high- and low- staff capacity.Here high-capacity is 2 or more full-time equivalent staff, while any staffing level below that is considered low-capacity. Interviews were analyzed in NVivo software based on coding of inductive and deductive themes. Results demonstrate the emergence of several key themes important to stewardship through succession.Conservation easement holders perform many functions - communication, monitoring, enforcement - that can influence landowner beliefs and behavior. Relationships between conservation easement holders and landowners have the least conflict when shared values and trust are high and external stressors are low.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Rissman, Adena R., Amy W. Morris, Alexey Kalinin, Patrice A. Kohl, Dominic P. Parker, Owen Selles. 2019. Private organizations, public data: Land trust choices about mapping conservation easements. Land Use Policy 89, 104221
- Type:
Theses/Dissertations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
Kazer, Alex. Social relations of private land conservation. MS in Agroecology, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Expected May 2020.
- Type:
Theses/Dissertations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Kalinin, A., 2019. Challenges and Opportunities of Decentralized Regulation and Resource Management. The University of Wisconsin-Madison. PhD Thesis in Agricultural and Applied Economics.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Rissman, Adena R. 2019. Forest management for novelty, persistence, and restoration on private lands. IUFRO Small Scale Forestry. July, 2019. Duluth, MN.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Rissman, Adena R. 2019. Social and policy influences on forest management choices for transition, persistence, and restoration. International Symposium on Society and Resources Management. June, 2019. Oshkosh, Wisconsin.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Kazer, Alex and Adena R. Rissman. 2019. Social relations of landowner succession, International Symposium for Society and Resource Management in Oshkosh, WI.
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Progress 10/01/17 to 09/30/18
Outputs
Target Audience:We have communicated with target audiences including conservation organizations (federal, state, local government, and nonprofit organizations) that hold conservation easements; landowners with conservation easements; and other parties with a stake in private land conservation. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The project has provided support for two graduate students who have completed professional development activities such as Individual Development Plans, workshops at UW-Madison, teaching opportunities, and other development. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We have engaged communities of interest in our project at several conferences. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We plan to finalize the sample of easement properties, compare them to properties without easements, interview conservation easement holders and landowners, and finalize remote sensing applications, and continue coding conservation easement terms into our database.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
1) Land cover and land use outcomes: One of the most time-consuming parts of this effort has been to map the locations of conservation easements. Wisconsin land trusts were contacted and asked to share spatial data and easement documents for their easement. Some land trusts shared GIS data and easement documents. A number of land trusts could not or would not share data with us. Those easements had to be mapped using the legal descriptions about their location in the Public Land Survey System (PLSS). The legal descriptions were obtained using online land records searches of county registrar of deeds offices and from land trusts. Easement locations were coded to the PLSS quarter quarter section level. Montana easements and easement documents were obtained from the state DNR. Montana easements are all digitized. A sampling scheme was designed and implemented to sample easements from areas experiencing high growth in Wisconsin and Montana. The terms, rules and standards of these easements will be coded. Sampling was based on township level housing growth between 1990 and 2010. This data was created from census block data. An initial model of easement location determinants was estimated using annual land cover change data created by other research team members. This model shows that urban development at the PLSS section level is a predictor of easement location. Continuing work on this part of the project will generate development probabilities for land parcels. Development probabilities will serve as an input to identify other determinants of easement location. This work is ongoing. 2) Policy terms: A coding scheme has been developed for analyzing easement documents. Pre-existing easement coding schemes have been compared, combined, and rewritten to develop a new coding scheme. An initial database of easement terms has been developed. 3) Economic drivers: Indicators for economic drivers have been identified and will be integrated into the sample design of conservation easements and counterfactual locations. 4) Remote sensing: Progress was made on studying the landcover change impacts of easements. There are three parts to this in the research design. The first is to identify predictors of easement locations. The second is to use the predictors of easement locations to identify counterfactual land parcels with similar characteristics. The third is to examine the impact of easements on landcover change relative to counterfactual parcels. We have worked to identify land cover changes, particularly development, in and around conservation easements in the past three decades. With the help of open-accessible dense time stacked remote sensing imageries and cloud computing system, the time series of several vegetation signals in targeting location were retrieved in an automatic manner, and therefore used to estimate the occurrence and corresponding time of development in the interested region and time range. In some dense-vegetated piloting areas, such as Wisconsin and North Eastern U.S., this method can successfully map the location and time of the medium scale developments. Meanwhile, lands with least amount of development (stable land cover types) in the same time period were also identified. 5) Social relations: We have conducted 10 key informant interviews with government and NGO staff members with extensive experience in conservation easements. These interviews, as well as concurrent research on existing easement literature, have been used to develop interview questionnaires that will be used in the next round of landowner and easement holder organization interviews. A list of holder staff interviewees has been generated and the list of landowner interviewees is being developed. Holder staff interviews are in progress.
Publications
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Adena R. Rissman. 2018. Public access to geospatial data on private lands and conservation easements. Presentation at the University of Wisconsin Geospatial Summit. November, 2018. Madison, Wisconsin
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Adena R. Rissman, Alexey Kalinin, Patrice Kohl, Nick Parker, and Owen Selles. Privacy and disclosure in nonprofit environmental governance: the case of mapping conservation easements. International Symposium on Society and Resources Management. June, 2018. Snowbird, Utah.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Adena R. Rissman. 2018. Private land conservation: improving effectiveness and transparency in an era of environmental change. Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture, University of Wisconsin-Madison. April, 2018.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2017
Citation:
Adena R. Rissman, Alexey Kalinin, Patrice Kohl, Nick Parker, and Owen Selles. Big data, big privacy concerns? Land trust transparency choices about digital maps of conservation easements. Land Trust Alliance Rally: National Land Conservation Conference. October, 2017.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Dominic Parker. 2018. Self Regulation in the Non-Profit Sector: The Case of Land Trust Accreditation. Property and Environment Research Center. August, 2018. Bozeman, Montana.
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