Treesearch

This paper examines the issue of outreach to diverse publics as a central concern to natural resource recreation management. Increasing diversity across the Nation has been accompanied by an underrepresentation of communities of color among outdoor recreation populations in natural resource settings. Mass media may be an excellent way to conduct outreach, but the current investment in media addressing diverse publics is discouraging. Patterns of media use and variations by different ethnic groups in levels of use, as well as various ethnic groups’ documented preference for ethnic media are...

This report presents results from a study of San Bernardino National Forest community residents’ experiences with and perceptions of fire, fire management, and the Forest Service. Using self-administered surveys and focus group discussions, we found that participants had personal experiences with fire, were concerned about fire, and felt knowledgeable about effective fire management. Consideration of future consequences, a measure of time orientation, was not found to be related to beliefs about and reactions to wildfire. Trust in the Forest Service was related to a number of fire-associate...

Experts around the world have identified ecosystem services that benefit humans. Ecosystem services provided by natural areas include cultural (such as providing outdoor recreation locations) and regulating (such as protecting water quality) services. It is important to understand both public perceptions about the importance of particular ecosystem services and the availability of natural areas to provide these ecosystem services. This study of Latino recreationists to Forest Service day use sites in two canyons in southern California examined these perceptions. These Latino respondents...

Parks and recreation areas around the world increasingly serve as international visitor attractions and play an important role in the international tourism industry. Given the increasingly diverse visitors, changes in racial and ethnic composition have confronted the management of parks and recreation areas . Since values presumably influence perceptions and behaviors among members of different cultures, studying values among culturally diverse visitors are important if we are to understand their invluence on perceptions as well as parks and recreation behavior. We are not aware of any...

Wilderness and day use recreationists’ preferences for natural resource management and their perceptions of purposes for management are examined in this paper. Environmental identity (EID) salience is used to help shed light on variations in recreationists’ preferences for how natural resources should be managed. Findings from two studies are reported; the first was from a survey of urban-proximate wilderness visitors, the second from visitors to day use areas. Both studies were conducted on national forest lands. The two studies incorporated similar items to allow comparisons. In both...

A new and potentially devastating pest of oaks, Quercus spp., has been discovered in southern California. The goldspotted oak borer, Agrilus coxalis Waterhouse (Coleoptera: Buprestidae), colonizes the sapwood surface and phloem of the main stem and larger branches of at least three species of Quercus in San Diego Co., California. Larval feeding kills patches and strips of the phloem and cambium resulting in crown die back followed by mortality. In a survey of forest stand conditions at three sites in this area, 67% of the Quercus trees were found with external or internal evidence of A....

Empirical critical loads (CL) for N deposition were determined from changes in epiphytic lichen communities, elevated NO3 leaching in streamwater, and reduced fine root biomass in ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa Dougl. ex Laws.) at sites with varying N deposition. The CL for lichen community impacts of 3.1 kg ha-1 year-1 is expected to protect all components of the forest ecosystem from the adverse effects of N deposition. Much of the western Sierra Nevada is above the lichen-based CL, showing significant changes in lichen indicator groups. The empirical N deposition threshold and that...

Some of the greatest forest health impacts in North America are caused by invasive forest insects and pathogens (e.g., emerald ash borer and sudden oak death in the US), by severe outbreaks of native pests (e.g., mountain pine beetle in Canada), and fires exacerbated by changing climate. Ozone and N and S pollutants continue to impact the health of forests in several regions of North America. Long-term monitoring of forest health indicators has facilitated the assessment of forest health and sustainability in North America. By linking a nationwide network of forest health plots with the...

Regional conservation plans are increasingly used to plan for and protect biodiversity at large spatial scales however the means of quantitatively evaluating their effectiveness are rarely specified. Multiple-species approaches, particular those which employ site-occupancy estimation, have been proposed as robust and efficient alternatives for assessing the status of wildlife populations over large spatial scales, but implemented examples are few. I used bats as a model to evaluate design considerations for the use of occupancy stimation to assess population status and habitat associations...

We develop an integrated model to predict private land-use decisions in response to policy incentives designed to increase the provision of carbon sequestration and species conservation across heterogeneous landscapes. Using data from the Willamette Basin, Oregon, we compare the provision of carbon sequestration and species conservation under five simple policies that offer payments for conservation. We evaluate policy performance compared with the maximum feasible combinations of carbon sequestration and species conservation on the landscape for various conservation budgets. None of the...