Sally L. Duncan

Social power and GIS technology: a review and assessment of approaches for natural resource management.

Geographic information system (GIS) technology fundamentally changes how information is viewed, literally, for its maps and databases contain uncertainty, assumptions, privileged knowledge, and story-making power, along with unintended social consequences. This article hypothesizes that the introduction of GIS into the public participation process in natural resource management blurs the boundaries between science and nonscience, requiring a revision of the way we think about, learn from, and use maps for environmental decision-making. This may lend a degree of “social power” to nonscientists in the form of providing improved access to data and maps, and along with it the resulting expression of community needs, priorities, and goals, with perhaps the “power” to influence policy and management decisions. A case study from western Oregon forest management provides context and practical examples. We consider, through a broad conceptual discussion, how GIS technology might contribute to, or detract from, confrontational environmental policy discussions, in particular the process of designing and structuring decision problems. In natural resource management this has tended to be a largely science-driven exercise at the expense of input from nonscientific stakeholders. Our case study findings suggest that using GIS can, with time, open the door to making environmental assessments more collaborative, story-making processes, with implications for natural resource management of many kinds. Although epistemological and power differences between scientists and lay audiences remain, they can be offset through various kinds of collaboration. Such efforts could contribute to a new phase in technology diffusion that we call development of faith.

Mapping whose reality? Geographic information systems (GIS) and “wild science”:

In taking the landscape-scale view increasingly demanded of natural resource management, scientific assessments make considerable use of geographic information systems (GIS) maps to convey the research findings they develop. Public interaction with scientists over natural resource management issues is therefore frequently mediated by such maps, which can directly influence how the landscape is viewed, and how science findings are communicated and understood. Analysis of the Coastal Landscape Analysis and Modeling Study (CLAMS) project in western Oregon reveals that GIS maps play a significant role in how we frame and address natural resource management issues. They can support the role of privileged knowledge as held by the map makers, typically scientists, and may reinforce it by the de facto “map tyranny” that gives primacy to scientific worldviews. But they can also enable broader kinds of inquiry through multiple frames of reference, enhancing story-making opportunities for stakeholders. Which of these trajectories is followed is affected by resource availability and new perceptions of responsibility, each of which reflects social power structures. The CLAMS case study suggests that map user/non-scientists appear less likely to be victims of “map tyranny” the more familiar they are with the technology. Accordingly, they become more likely to push for usable results from it, and more confident about engaging their own knowledge with that of the map maker/scientists.

Integrating ecological and social ranges of variability in conservation of biodiversity: past, present, and future.

Historical range of variability has been proposed as a concept that can be used by forest land managers to guide conservation of ecosystem functions and biodiversity conservation. The role of humans in historical range of variability has remained somewhat murky and unsettled, even though it is clear that humans have been, are, and will continue to be forces of disturbance and recovery in forested landscapes. We attempt to develop concepts that integrate the ecological and social forces affecting landscape variability. Toward that end, we present a conceptual framework that places “range of variability” into a broader context and integrates the ecological and social forces affecting landscapes past, present, and future. We use two terms to aid us in understanding the utility of historical range of variability as a context and future range of variability as a point of comparison: (1) the ecological range of variability is the estimated range of some ecological condition as a function of the biophysical and social forces affecting the area and (2) the social range of variability is the range of an ecological condition that society finds acceptable at a given time. We find it is important to recognize that future range of variability represents a constantly emerging and changing set of conditions, and that the more humans push a system to depart from its historical range of variabiloity domain, the less likely it becomes that historical range of variability processes will prove useful as benchmarks in recovering a system.

Is There Potential for the Historical Range of Variability to Guide Conservation Given the Social Range of Variability

Using the historical range of forest conditions as a reference for managing landscapes has been proposed as a coarse-filter approach to biodiversity conservation. By emulating historical disturbance processes, it is thought that forest management can produce forest composition and structure similar to the conditions that once supported the native biota. A recent project was designed to integrate social and ecological findings to investigate the important relationships between the state of ecological understanding of a region, the state of the regions biodiversity, and the state of the regions social understanding of how it might be managed for biodiversity conservation into the future. The project relied on established concepts of the historical range of variability (HRV) and developed the concept of the social range of variability to help explain the interaction of social and ecological assessments, particularly their interaction to create future ranges of variability. The Oregon Coast Range, where a rich history of HRV research has been completed starting with paleoecological reconstructions of the historical fire regime, was one of five sites in the United States that were selected as case studies. We found land development and impending climate change to be major hurdles impeding the use of the HRV as a management regime. We also found that the complexities and uncertainties of management preclude the use of any single tool to tackle landscape-scale challenges and suggest that land management needs to become a continuous process of negotiation.

Ecological History vs. Social Expectations: Managing Aquatic Ecosystems

The emerging perspective of ecosystems as both non-equilibrium and dynamic fits aquatic ecosystems as well as terrestrial systems. It is increasingly recognized that watersheds historically passed through different conditions over time. Habitat conditions varied in quantity and quality, primarily as a function of the time since the last major disturbance and the legacy of that disturbance. Thus, to match the effects of historical processes, we would expect a variety of conditions to exist across the watersheds in a region at any time. Additionally, watersheds have different potentials to provide habitat for given fish species because of variation in physical features. This developing ecological understanding is often preempted by social desires to bring all watersheds to a “healthy” condition, which in turn is reflected in a common regulatory approach mandating a single condition as the long-term goal for all watersheds. Matching perceptions and regulations to the way aquatic systems actually change and evolve through time will be a major challenge in the future.

GIS Technology in Natural Resource Management: Process as a Tool of Change

Abstract Natural resource management in the United States has experienced dramatic change since landmark legislation in the 1960s and 1970s ultimately brought about high-visibility policy decisions on the public lands of the Pacific Northwest in the 1990s. The socio-political trajectory of that change has moved from institutionally imposed, agency-based decisions toward greater public involvement, increasingly calling upon new technologies to analyse data and communicate scientific findings. An investigation of the use of GIS technology in public involvement in the Coastal Landscape Analysis and Modeling Study in western Oregon finds that use of this technology plays a potentially transformative role that can encourage further movement along this social change–based trajectory but can also constrain it. Use of the technology can constrain change by increasing awareness of uncertainty and by supporting the development of privileged knowledge as held by GIS map-makers, typically scientists. It can encourage...

Range of Variability in Southern Coastal Plain Forests: Its Historical, Contemporary, and Future Role in Sustaining Biodiversity

Historical range of variation (HRV) has been used as a conceptual tool to determine appropriate management actions to sustain or restore diversity of ecological systems. This concept has come into question for both biological and social considerations, and the southeastern United States is a good model system to test its utility. Southeastern Coastal Plain upland pine savannas and woodlands and their associated wetlands are among the most diverse communities in temperate North America, having both high levels of species richness and large numbers of endemic flora and fauna. However, this diversity is intimately linked with disturbance regimes. Maintaining frequent fire, varied in season based on changing management objectives through time, is the most important management tool for sustaining biodiversity. Moreover, the landscape has been molded by a long history of intense land use that has altered both the biological and the social landscape in which management occurs, and threatens the native diversity. Management must anticipate likely trends and adopt strategies that provide flexibility for managers to deal with the future, both socially and ecologically. In the Southeast, the most dominant trend is associated with urbanization and forest fragmentation, which results from urban sprawl. This issue joins others—fire and smoke, logging, access, in-holdings, and the uncertainty of scientific models, for example—as matters of major concern to the public. Ultimately, it is the public that eventually grants or withholds social permission to manage. We explore, here, the potential and the limitations for how history can inform future management. Rather than being used as a specific management tool, we find that one purpose for which HRV may be well suited is serving as a broad communication framework to help diverse publics understand the concept of landscape dynamics. This approach would provide the fundamental background material for stakeholders to understand how ecological conditions and social acceptability interact through time to mold and constrain future possible ranges of variability.

Regional Policy Models for Forest Biodiversity Analysis: Lessons From Coastal Oregon

The crisis in the early 1990s over conservation of biodiversity in the forests of the Pacific Northwest caused an upheaval in forest policies for public and private landowners. These events led to the development of the Coastal Landscape Assessment and Modeling Study (CLAMS) for the Coast Range Physiographic Province of Oregon, a province containing over two million hectares of forest with a complex mixture of public and private ownership. Over a decade, CLAMS scientists developed regional data bases and tools to enable assessments of the implications of current policies for biodiversity and have begun using these data and tools to test ideas for solving policy problems. We summarize here four main lessons from our work: (1) Regional ecosystem perspectives, while rewarding, are difficult to achieve. Helping policy makers and the public understand biodiversity policies for an entire province can assist in developing more reasoned policies. However, this result is difficult to achieve because needed scientific building blocks generally do not exist, few policy institutions address regional cross-ownership issues, people can find it difficult to take a regional view, and the appropriate region for analysis changes with the policy problem. (2) Interest in environmental policy analysis may come as much from a pursuit of power as a pursuit of understanding. Biodiversity policy analyses are often viewed as weapons in an ongoing political battle. Also, results that might destabilize existing policies generally will not be well received by those in power. (3) The relationship of regional analyses to civic processes remains challenging and unsettled. Communication between citizens and scientists takes real effort. Also, collaborative processes both inspire and constrain regional policy analysis, and scientific work often proceeds at a different pace than these processes. In the end, CLAMSs most important effect on the civic dialogue may be to change how people think about the Coast Range. (4) An important role exists for anticipatory assessments done independently by scientists. Independent review will be especially important as policy analyses shift to management of nonfederal forests. Our future efforts in CLAMS will focus on evaluating ideas for fundamental changes in forest management.

The Past and Future of Colorado’s Forests: Connecting People and Ecology

The future composition, structure, and dynamics of forests in Colorado will develop in response to both ecological and social factors. Key ecological factors that shaped forests in the past included a great diversity of climatic conditions that results from complex topography and a broad range of elevations, as well as legacies of long-term climate changes and responses of plant and animal species. The influence of direct and indirect human impacts has steadily increased over the past two centuries, changing most forests. A workshop examined how goals of sustaining ecosystems and biodiversity will depend on a confluence of ecological and social changes. Key themes from the workshop included an acknowledgment that the sheer complexity of factors and interactions will limit our ability to shape the future, and that effective combinations of ecology and societies will depend in large part on the use of creative narratives that allow us to communicate productively among people with incredibly different knowledge and perspectives. These insights from Colorados forest landscapes and communities will likely resonate with other regions.