Vermont Project: Structured Decision Making for Land Use Planning in Vermont: Integrating Social and Ecological Objectives

Vermont Project

Structured Decision Making for Land Use Planning in Vermont: Integrating Social and Ecological Objectives

January 2010 - March 2015

Personnel

Participating Agencies

Northeastern States Research Cooperative

The most serious threat to native wildlife species in the Northern Forest is the conversion of natural lands to development. Many wildlife species that live in the Northern Forest require large areas to carry out their life cycle, suggesting a landscape scale approach is needed to ensure long term biological conservation. However, top-down landscape level planning is challenging in the Northern Forest, where the majority of lands are under private ownership, resulting in landscape patterns that are driven from the bottom-up. That is, individual decisions made by local land owners and towns acting in their own interest collectively determine landscape quality for wildlife species, for better or worse. The issue of how to “design” a landscape that meets the needs of multiple interests is inherent in the town planning process. Often, however, wildlife is a silent stakeholder in this process. The goal of this project is to develop a prototype of a Structured Decision Making (SDM) process that will bring wildlife to the table in local town planning efforts. The first phase of the Structured Decision Process is to develop measurable objectives (indicators + standards), such as “Ensure that at least 40% of the town is forested.” To establish indicators and standards for development for 8 Vermont towns, we will develop visual preference surveys that combine CommunityViz software and Google Earth. Residents will be surveyed and asked to respond to visual images of varying levels of development, agriculture and natural lands within their local community. Results of the survey will establish town planning objectives in terms of development, forest, and agriculture for each town. Given individual town objectives, we will use data from previous NSRC efforts to assess the likely ecological consequences of these “norms” for a variety of forest-dependent wildlife species. This process will, for the first time, allow state biologists to evaluate how planning objectives for a collection of local towns acting will likely impact landscape quality for wildlife species. Our goal, ultimately, is to make develop this process so that all communities in Vermont have access to this approach, thus providing state resource managers with an opportunity to determine if state-wide wildlife objectives will likely be met through individual town planning processes.

Research Publications

Research Publications	Publication Date
Espenshade, J., J. D. Murdoch, T. M. Donovan, R. E. Manning, and C. A. Bettigole. 2018. Public acceptability of development in the Northern Forest of Vermont, USA – the influence of wildlife information, recreation involvement, and demographic characteristics. PLoS ONE 13(12):e0203515. \| Abstract \| Download \| Publisher Website	December 2018	Increasing development such as roads and houses will alter future landscapes and result in biological, social, and economic trade-offs. Managing development requires information on the public’s acceptability of development and understanding which factors shape acceptability. In this study, we examined three questions: 1) What is the public’s acceptability of development? 2) Is acceptability of development influenced by wildlife information? and 3) Is the maximum amount of acceptable development influenced by views about wildlife, involvement in outdoor recreation, and demographic factors? We conducted a visual-preference survey of 9,000 households in Vermont, USA that asked about acceptable levels of development, acceptability of wildlife, involvement in recreation, and individual and town demographics. The survey response rate was 44%. Maximum acceptable condition (MAC) for development was 41 houses/km2 and not meaningfully influenced by broader consequences of development on seven common wildlife species. MAC was influenced by views on individual species, including bear and coyote, but not by other species such as deer, fox, and bobcat. Respondents with a positive attitude toward bear favored less development, whereas the opposite relationship existed for coyote. Similarly, MAC was negatively influenced by involvement in birding and hunting, but not by other common recreational activities. Among demographic factors, respondents that were younger and not born in Vermont were more accepting of development. Population density also positively influenced development acceptability. Results provide measures of the public’s acceptability of development that can help guide decision-making about development, wildlife, and recreation management.
Bettigole, C., T. M. Donovan, R. Manning, and J. Austin. 2013. Normative standards for land use in Vermont: Implications for biodiversity. Biological Conservation. \| Abstract \| Download \| Publisher Website	August 2013	The conversion of natural lands to developed uses poses a great threat to global terrestrial biodiversity. Natural resource managers, tasked with managing wildlife as a public trust, require techniques for predicting how much and where wildlife habitat is likely to be converted in the future. Here, we develop a methodology to estimate the “social carrying capacity for development” –SKd – for 251 towns across the state of Vermont, USA. SKd represents town residents’ minimum acceptable human population size and level of development within town boundaries. To estimate SKd across towns within the state of Vermont (USA), as well as the average state-wide SKd, we administered a visual preference survey (n = 1505 responses) to Vermont residents, and asked respondents to rate alternative landuse scenarios in a fictional Vermont town on a scale of +4 (highly acceptable) to −4 (highly unacceptable). We additionally collected demographic data such as age and income, as well as ancillary information such as participation in town-planning meetings and location of residence. We used model selection and AIC to fit a cubic function to the response data, allowing us to estimate SKd at a town scale based on town demographic characteristics. On average, Vermonters had a SKd of 9.1% development on the landscape; this estimate is 68% higher than year 2000 levels for development (5.4%). Respondents indicated that management action to curb development was appropriate at 9.4% development (roughly the statewide SKd average). Management by local, regional, and state levels were considered acceptable for curbing development while federal level management of development was considered unacceptable. Given a scenario where development levels were at SKd, we predicted a 16,753 km2 reduction in forested land (−11.16%) and a 1038 km2 reduction in farmland (−60.45%). Such changes would dramatically alter biodiversity patterns state-wide. In a companion paper, we estimate how these changes would affect the distribution of wildlife species.
Bettigole, C., T. Donovan, R. Manning, J. Austin, and R. Long. 2013. Acceptability of residential development in a regional landscape: Potential effects on wildlife occupancy patterns. Biological Conservation. \| Abstract \| Download \| Publisher Website	October 2013	The conversion of natural lands to developed uses may pose the single greatest human threat to global terrestrial biodiversity. Continued human growth and development over the next century will further exacerbate these effects of habitat loss and fragmentation. Natural resource managers are tasked with managing wildlife as a public trust, yet often have little say in land use decisions. Generally speaking, decision makers could benefit from an understanding of what different regulations mean in terms of wildlife distribution. In a companion paper (Bettigole et al., 2013), we surveyed town residents throughout Vermont to measure how respondents feel about a range of development levels within their town boundaries. We estimated the “social carrying capacity for development” – or SKd – for 251 towns in Vermont. SKd provides an estimate of the level of developed land cover classes that town residents deem “acceptable” within their town boundaries. In this paper, we design a framework for linking the town-specific SKd estimates with the wildlife distribution patterns for three wide-ranging mammalian species: American black bear (Ursus americanus), fisher (Martes pennanti), and bobcat (Lynx rufus). We simulated landscape conditions at SKd for each town in Vermont, and then used existing occupancy models for the three target species to spatially map and compare occupancy rates in the baseline year 2000 with occupancy rates at SKd. With nearly 90% of Vermont towns willing to increase developed landcover classes within town boundaries compared to baseline levels, significant state-wide changes in occupancy rates were predicted for all three focal species. Average occupancy rates declined by −15.9% and −3.1% for black bear and bobcats, respectively. Average occupancy rates for fisher increased by 9.0%. This study provides a method for linking development standards within a town with wildlife occurrence. Across towns, the methodology spatially identifies areas that may be at risk of future development, as well as identifying areas where wildlife distribution patterns may face future change as a result of increased human population growth and development.

Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units Program: Vermont Education, Research and Technical Assistance for Managing Our Natural Resources

Vermont Project

Structured Decision Making for Land Use Planning in Vermont: Integrating Social and Ecological Objectives

January 2010 - March 2015

Personnel

Participating Agencies

Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units Program: Vermont
Education, Research and Technical Assistance for Managing Our Natural Resources