Multiple benefits of large, undeveloped tracts in urbanized landscapes: A North Carolina example (original) (raw)
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2009
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Assessing the Ecological and Social Benefits of Private Land Conservation in Colorado
Conservation Biology, 2008
Conservation of private land through conservation easements, development agreements, and clustered housing has increased greatly as have criticisms of the laws, public programs, and incentives that motivate landowners to use them. Rapid land-use change at the urban-rural interface in Larimer County, Colorado, has given rise to programs that provide a variety of land-conservation options for landowners. As of January 2005, roughly 60% of Larimer County was publicly owned, and 3% or 16,200 ha was privately owned with some form of protection. We used document analysis, a landowner survey, targeted interviews, and a landscape-level spatial analysis to analyze the patterns, quantities, and qualities of private land conservation. We created a jurisdiction-specific typology of desired benefits from local government-planning documents to help evaluate conservation parcels. Most easements and other conservation documents used general terms and did not describe the site-specific values of the land being conserved. Landowners were able to describe some benefits not included in parcel-specific documents, and our spatial analysis revealed parcel-specific and cumulative conservation benefits such as the amount of buffering, infill, connectivity, protected agricultural land, riparian protection, and other benefits not referenced by either documents or landowners. Conservation benefits provided by a parcel varied depending on its geographic location, the specific institution such as a land trust or open space program that a landowner worked with, and the conservation mechanism used, such as voluntary easement or residential clustering requirements. The methods we used provide a template for jurisdictions wishing to undertake a similar analysis. Our findings may assist other jurisdictions and institutions interested in improving how land-conservation benefits are described; justify and inform future investments in private land conservation; assist local governments and other institutions with the assessment of program effectiveness; and be useful for conservation planners who wish to become more involved in on-the-ground implementation of conservation actions.
Proceedings of the Second …, 2011
In many parts of the world, the combined effects of wildfire, climate change, and population growth in the wildland-urban interface pose increasing risks to both people and biodiversity. These risks are exemplified in western Oregon's Willamette Valley Ecoregion, where population is projected to double by 2050 and climate change is expected to increase wildfire risk. Restoring elements of the region's historic fire-adapted prairie, savanna, and woodland habitats may help to reduce future wildfire risk and help conserve the region's threatened biodiversity. We report on a mail survey (n = 939) examining the sociodemographic factors influencing private landowners' likelihood of restoring fire-adapted habitats in the future. We found that newer landowners, landowners with a liberal political ideology, and landowners who have experienced wildfire are more likely to restore fire-adapted habitats in the future than their long-time owner, conservative, or inexperienced counterparts. However, experience with wildfire ceased to be a significant influence when we controlled for underlying landowner motivations for owning their property. Our findings can help planners and scientists better understand and account for the effects of a dynamic human population's influence on landscape patterns, structures, and composition.
Protected lands are an established method for conserving biodiversity and ecosystem services. Moreover, agencies and organizations are increasingly looking to private lands as places for new protected lands establishment. However, the effectiveness of protected lands in guarding against the loss of species or services can vary based on their coverage of habitat and species, management strategy, and their size and configuration across the landscape. We compare protected lands patches between two adjacent ecoregions, the public lands centric Blue Ridge and the private land dominated Piedmont, using estimates of land cover, management practices, and landscape configuration as a proxy for their relative contribution towards the long-term conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services. We conducted a hotspot analysis to evaluate geographic changes in spatial clustering of protected lands establishment between the years 1985 and 2015. In addition, we evaluated climate resiliency of protected lands patches using metrics developed by Anderson et al. (2016). We found that, compared to public lands, private protected lands contain larger amounts of agriculture than forest, allow for more utilitarian use than public lands, and are less resilient to climatic change. Furthermore, although total area of private protected lands increased since 1985, they are smaller and more disconnected, contributing less to overall connectivity of the protected lands network. To improve upon past efforts, we must improve management accounting and practice and prioritize land for protection that improves coverage, network con-nectivity, and climate resilience.
An interdisciplinary assessment of private conservation areas in the Western United States
Ambio
Conservation easements are the fastest growing private conservation strategy in the United States. However, mechanisms to assess private land conservation as well as their support by the general public are not well understood. This study uses the ecosystem services framework for assessing existing private lands in Idaho and identifies areas for future conservation easements. Using conservation targets of the land trust as a guide for selecting ecosystem services, we (a) mapped the spatial delivery of conservation targets across public and private lands, (b) explored public awareness in terms of social importance and vulnerability, and (c) mapped future priority areas by characterizing conservation bundles. We found that public lands provided the highest levels of conservation targets, and we found no difference in conservation target provision between private areas and conservation easements. The spatial characterization of conservation target bundles identified potential future pri...
Private land: conservation’s new frontier in America
International Journal of Environmental Studies, 2015
Conservation in North America has proceeded through three discernible stages in the last 125 years. Moving from a response to unregulated commercial harvest and wildlife depletion, it matured into a science based institution that was largely driven by government policy and supported by organized conservation groups. Protecting significant regions by setting them aside as National Parks or otherwise protected landscapes was a significant aspect of conservation throughout its first and second phases. A new and effective paradigm of private lands conservation initiatives has now arisen to face modern conservation challenges in North America.
2008
Conservation easements have emerged as an important tool for land trusts and government agencies aiming to conserve private land in the United States. Despite the increase in public investment in conservation easement acquisitions, little is known about their conservation outcomes, particularly at a landscape scale. The nine-county San Francisco Bay Area exemplifies a complex conservation context: 190 organizations hold 24% of the land base in some type of protection status. Using a detailed protected lands database, we compared the contributions of conservation easements and fee-simple protected areas to ecological, agricultural, and public recreation benefits. We found that conservation easements were more likely to conserve grasslands, oak woodlands, and agricultural land, whereas fee-simple properties were more likely to conserve chaparral and scrub, redwoods, and urban areas. Conservation easements contributed to open space connectivity but were unlikely to be integrated into local land-use plans or provide public recreation. In particular, properties held by land trusts were less likely to allow for public recreation than were public lands. Conservation easements held by land trusts and special districts complemented fee-simple lands and provided greater conservation of some ecological communities and agricultural lands than fee-simple properties. Spatial databases of protected areas that include conservation easements are necessary for conservation planning and assessment.