The role of private landowner in sustaining ecosystem services in California

Ferranto, S., L. Huntsinger and M. Kelly. 2014. Sustaining ecosystem services from private lands in California: the role of the landowner. Rangelands 36(5): 44-51

Forty percent, 13 million ha, of California’s forests and rangelands are privately owned. Deserts and forests are mostly in government ownership, while the state’s Mediterranean rangelands are largely in private hands: more than 80% of hardwood rangelands and annual grasslands are in private ownership. Landowner participation in sustaining ecosystem services means conservation initiatives need to build on landowner management objectives, practices, and goals.

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Management Without Borders? Landowner Practices and Attitudes toward Cross-Boundary Cooperation

Ferranto, S., L. Huntsinger, C. Getz, W. Stewart, G. Nakamura, and M. Kelly. 2013. Management without borders? A survey of landowner practices and attitudes towards cross-­boundary cooperation. Society and Natural Resources 26(9): 1082-1100. DOI: 10.1080/08941920.2013.779343.

Ecosystem management requires cross-jurisdictional problem-solving and, when private lands are involved, cross-boundary cooperation from many individual landowners. Fragmented ownership patterns and variation in ownership values, as well as distrust and transaction costs, can limit cooperation. Results from a landowner survey in California were analyzed using an audience segmentation approach. Landowners were grouped into four clusters according to ownership motivations: rural lifestyle, working landscape, natural amenity, and financial investment. All clusters showed willingness to cooperate for all three topics addressed in the survey (pest and disease control, fire hazard reduction, and wildlife conservation), but their degree of willingness differed by cluster, who they were expected to cooperate with, and the natural resource problem addressed. All were more willing to cooperate with neighbors and local groups than with state and federal agencies. Landowners were most willing to cooperate to reduce fire hazard, which is the most direct threat to property and well-being. Journal link.

How do owners of California's working landscapes manage their land?

Plieninger, T., S. Ferranto, L. Huntsinger, M. Kelly, and C. Getz. 2012. Appreciation, use, and management of biodiversity and ecosystem services in California’s working landscapes. Environmental Management. 50(3):427-440 DOI 10.1007/s00267-012-9900-z. 

‘‘Working landscapes’’ is the concept of fostering effective ecosystem stewardship and conservation through active human presence and management and integrating livestock, crop, and timber production with the provision of a broad range of ecosystem services at the landscape scale. Based on a statewide survey of private landowners of ‘‘working’’ forests and rangelands in California, we investigated whether owners who are engaged in commercial livestock or timber production appreciate and manage biodiversity and ecosystem services on their land in different ways than purely residential owners.

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Using the web as a participatory tool in adaptive management

Kelly, M., S. Ferranto, S. Lei, K. Ueda, L. Huntsinger. 2012. Expanding the table: The web as a tool for participatory adaptive management in California forests. Journal of Environmental Management 109: 1-11

Participatory adaptive management is widely promoted as the new paradigm in public lands management. It is grounded in two underlying principles - that management experiments and diverse sources of information should be used to continually refine management in complex ecological systems, and that the public must be included throughout the adaptive management process. Access to scientific results and exchange of information is at the core of both of these principles. The recent proliferation of Internet communities and web-based participation tools raises the question of how the Internet might help facilitate information exchange in participatory adaptive management. Using a case study approach, the role of web technologies in facilitating the flow of transparent and useful information was examined in a participatory adaptive management project focused on Forest Service vegetation management treatments in California’s Sierra Nevada.

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How do forest and rangeland owners in California get information about environmental sustainability?

Ferranto, S., L. Huntsinger, C. Getz, W. Stewart, G. Nakamura, and M. Kelly. 2012. Consider the source: The impact of media and authority in outreach to California’s forest and rangeland owners. Journal of Environmental Management 97(1): 131-140.

Over half of the United States is privately owned. Improving environmental sustainability requires that the scientific and management communities provide effective outreach to the many landowners making decisions about land use and management practices on these lands. We surveyed California forest and rangeland owners in ten counties throughout the state to assess the impact of existing outreach and identify gaps in information distribution and content. Although a number of organizations provide land management advice highly-ranked by landowners, no individual organization currently reaches more than 30% of forest and rangeland owners, and these groups together reach less than 60% of landowners.

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Understanding how California's forest and rangeland owners value land

Ferranto, S., L. Huntsinger, C. Getz, G. Nakamura, W. Stewart, S. Drill, Y. Valachovic, M. DeLasaux and M. Kelly. 2012. Forest and rangeland owners value land for natural amenities, and as financial investment. California Agriculture 65(4): 184-191

Forty-two percent of California’s forests and rangelands are privately owned. These lands provide important ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration, wildlife habitat, and pollination services, but little is known about the people who own and manage them. We surveyed forest and rangeland owners in California, and found that these long-time landowners value their properties for their natural amenities and as a financial investment.

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