Browsing by Author "Schultz, Courtney, committee member"
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Item Open Access An evaluation of wilderness character as a framework for monitoring and measuring wilderness in Rocky Mountain National Park(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2014) Leslie, Colin Robert, author; Newman, Peter, advisor; Pettebone, David, committee member; Schultz, Courtney, committee memberThe Wilderness Act of 1964 (Pub.L. 88-577) provided for the statutory designation of wilderness areas in the United States through the creation of the National Wilderness Preservation System (NWPS). While the Wilderness Act specifies requirements for wilderness designation, it does not specify how agencies should manage wilderness areas, other than to "[preserve] the wilderness character of the area." Over the last 50 years a number of frameworks and methods for managing and assessing wilderness have been proposed. Recently, Wilderness Character Monitoring (WCM) has emerged as a promising framework for quantify the status and trend of wilderness character within management areas. While interagency efforts have been largely successful in establishing the WCM framework across all four managing agencies, few studies have been conducted evaluating the process of WCM, particularly as it relates to the broader goals of wilderness management. This thesis explores the potential for wilderness character concepts to inform wilderness management through the presentation of four chapters. The first chapter provides an introduction to the concept of wilderness character including a brief history of wilderness, its associated values and some management challenges. Chapters two and three present independent manuscripts that seek to better understand wilderness character from two different scales of analysis: conceptual overview and measurement of a specific wilderness value, respectively. Chapter two (first manuscript) evaluates wilderness character by applying the WCM framework to the newly established Rocky Mountain National Park Wilderness. The introduction and methods sections provide an overview of the study area, the WCM monitoring structure, and additional evaluative criteria used for the selection of measures. Selected measures are then presented in the results section, followed by a discussion of insights and considerations gained from both the final list of measures as well as the selection process itself. Chapter three (second manuscript) evaluates one discrete value or measure of wilderness: soundscapes. Specifically, this study examines the potential of Observer Based Source Identification Logging (OBSIL) to inform soundscapes assessments in wilderness by measuring audibility metrics. The two metrics used are a) percent time audible (PTA), which represents the extent within a given timeframe a particular source is audible; and b) the noise-free interval (NFI), which represents the length (usually average) that no non-natural sounds are audible. Findings from this study indicate both a high potential of OBSIL to inform soundscape assessments and provides several insights that support the need for better understanding of the wilderness acoustical environment. Chapter four concludes this thesis with a discussion of insights gained regarding the potential of WCM in the larger context of wilderness stewardship.Item Embargo Cultivating collaborative adaptability in public lands social-ecological settings: linking theory, practice, and evaluation across cases and contexts(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) Beeton, Tyler Andrew, author; Galvin, Kathleen, advisor; Cheng, Antony, committee member; Schultz, Courtney, committee member; Snodgrass, Jeffrey, committee memberCollaborative and adaptive forms of governance have become increasingly common in environmental management as they are claimed to help reduce conflict over resource management issues and uncertainty, increase trust, support shared understanding and buy-in for management actions, and facilitate social learning. In the USDA Forest Service, legal, regulatory, and bureaucratic challenges, and the increased emphasis on ecosystem management has increased the demand for, and investment in, collaboration as a tool to meet forest and fire management goals. Collaborative governance and adaptability scholarship has documented the key drivers and external conditions that influence collaboration, the internal dynamics that cultivate or constrain collaboration, and the outputs and outcomes of collaboration. Still, a number of research gaps remain that, if addressed, could advance the theory and practice of collaborative governance. First, the ways in which groups adapt and remain resilient to inevitable internal and external changes remains underexplored. Second, despite over twenty years of research in this space, relatively little is known about the configuration of, and relationship between, factors that comprise collaborative governance and adaptability. Third, collaboration is dynamic. As groups evolve, they create value in different ways, and their needs and priorities change. Thus, there is a need for periodic and ongoing assessments of how collaboration is working in local contexts, current challenges, and what adaptations are needed to improve collaborative processes and progress. This dissertation starts to address these research gaps and needs. I situated this work within the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program, a Forest Service-administered program first authorized in 2009 and reauthorized in 2019. The work presented in this dissertation was co-developed with the Southwest Ecological Restoration Institutes and the Forest Service Forest, Range Management, and Vegetation Ecology Program. Specifically, the work supported synthesis of lessons learned from the first 10 years of the CFLRP and the development of a standardized and longitudinal assessment of collaborative governance and adaptability for use in the CFLRP Common Monitoring Strategy. Broadly, my dissertation contributes to our understanding of the factors that facilitate or frustrate adaptation to inevitable change in collaborative settings. This is a critical line of inquiry given the increased and sustained investment in long-term collaborative environmental management in the United States and beyond. I employed a mixed-method analysis consisting of focus groups, program-wide surveys, and a systematic review, and I drew on the Integrative Framework for Collaborative Governance, collaborative adaptability and resilience literature, and organization theory to frame my analysis. In Chapter 2, I asked, how do collaborative governance regimes adapt to disruptions and what barriers constrained collaborative resilience? I found that collaboratives demonstrated the ability to mobilize social capital, learning, resources, and flexibility to respond to disruptions. Yet authority, accountability, and capacity complicated collaborative resilience. I conclude Chapter 2 with policy and practice recommendations to cultivate collaborative resilience moving forward. In Chapter 3, I developed and deployed a program-wide collaborative governance and adaptability assessment to all currently authorized CFLRP projects. I used a modified grounded theory approach to document and describe CFLRP project respondents' recommended actions and adaptations to improve collaborative processes and progress towards desired outcomes. Key recommendations included the need for: inclusive engagement throughout the process; institutional arrangements; resources and capacity; monitoring and social learning; trust, relationships, and commitment; external communication and outreach; and local autonomy in decision making. I discussed these findings in light of collaborative governance theory and practice and included relevant resources and actions that practitioners and funders of collaboratives and policy actors may consider to support collaboratives in working towards forest and fire management objectives. In chapter 4, I again used the program-wide CFLRP collaborative governance and adaptability assessment, and I used confirmatory factor analysis to test assumptions underlying the dimensional structure, reliability, and validity of measures thought to comprise collaborative governance and adaptability. I found that the components of collaborative governance and adaptability comprised six dimensions – principled engagement, shared motivation, leadership, resources, knowledge and learning, and institutional arrangements. As expected, several dimensions were significantly related, and the pattern of inter-factor relationships aligned with theoretical and empirical assumptions. We also found that the six dimensions represent statistically reliable, valid, and distinct measures that may be used to evaluate collaborative governance and adaptability. While our focus was on the CFLRP, the assessment can be adapted to other collaborative environmental governance contexts. Chapter 5 ends with a summary of findings, limitations of the work, and future research directions to address lingering questions about collaborative environmental governance.Item Open Access Examining students' systems thinking in a natural resources management capstone class(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2016) Casper, Anne Marie Aramati, author; Balgopal, Meena, advisor; Fernandez-Gimenez, Maria, advisor; Schultz, Courtney, committee member; Atadero, Rebecca, committee memberCritical Literature Review Humans undisputedly dominate Earth’s ecosystems, therefore we need to move beyond 'human-free' conceptions of ecosystems. However, there is a lack of consensus about how humans, our influence, and our social systems fit within ecosystems, and several different terms, such as social-ecological system, are now used to describe integrated systems. The current proliferation of terms and lack of shared meaning causes problems for interdisciplinary researchers as well as students. I propose that our language needs to catch up with our conceptions, and that ‘ecosystem’ needs to be explicitly defined to include humans, our impacts, and our social systems. Research Manuscripts Natural resource management (NRM) decisions have far reaching implications for global ecological change. Because beliefs influence decisions, it is vital that the NRM curriculum reflects the shift to include humans as integrated components of ecosystems to facilitate effective future NRM, however no appropriate metric exists for assessment. Additionally, there is a concern that NRM students are not graduating with well-developed systems thinking, communication, and group work skills. Social-ecological systems (SES) are linked social and ecological systems, and graduates who are able to consider a SES as a whole are better able to address the complex problems in NRM. I framed my research through the intersection of socio-cultural and conceptual change theories. Socio-cultural theory states that each individual’s knowledge and experiences influence how they learn, and conceptual change theory describes the process individuals go through to replace existing conceptions with new conceptions. The intersection of these lenses imbeds conceptual change within an individuals’ experiences and knowledge. My guiding question was: how do students' conceptions of systems thinking change during a one-semester capstone class? Specifically, How do 1) students describe their conceptions of social-ecological systems and resilience as changing over the course of an NRM capstone course, and what do they think helped change them? 2) NRM students situate humans in relation to ecosystems, and more specifically, to the term, ecosystem? 3) NRM students revise their conceptions of 'ecosystem' over the course of their capstone course? I used phenomenological and grounded theory qualitative research approaches to study the Spring 2014 and 2015 NRM capstone classes at a large research university in the United States. I interviewed students, collected all coursework for analysis, audio recorded lectures, and obtained copies of all lecture presentation materials for analysis. In my phenomenological study (n=3) I found that students' conceptions of social and biophysical systems became more integrated, and their ideas about systems thinking and resilience broadened to encompass greater complexity. These conceptual shifts were influenced by interactions with other students, natural resource professionals, and stakeholders during class and their semester-long group project. However, some students still held under-developed conceptions of ecosystems, which became the focus of the following two study manuscripts. From student responses (n=20) and the course context I developed a continuum of human relationships to ecosystems for my metric to address question two: i) exclusion, ii) uncertain-exclusion, iii) uncertain, iv) uncertain-inclusion, and v) inclusion. My continuum provides a useful tool to help unpack the complexity of the human-environment relationship conception, which is a part of the ecological literacy construct. To address research question three I used my continuum to identify how students' conceptions changed. I found that students' definitions of the relationships between natural and ecosystem, human, and human artifact influenced their conceptions of ecosystems. Students who did not describe ecosystems as natural struggled much less with an integrated human-ecosystem conception than those who described ecosystems as natural. My overarching findings indicate that students can and do experience conceptual change throughout their capstone course. However, I found that students' conceptions and conceptual shifts were not always consistent with the material presented in the class. Therefore, it is important to teach from a constructivist standpoint (that each individual builds their own meaning of the world, which is influenced by their prior knowledge and experiences), and explicitly co-construct meaning in the classroom.Item Open Access Investments in watershed services: understanding a new arena of environmental governance in the western United States(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2015) Huber-Stearns, Heidi Rebecca, author; Cheng, Antony S., advisor; Schultz, Courtney, committee member; Reid, Robin, committee member; Seidl, Andrew, committee memberIssues around sustainably managing freshwater resources are one of the most challenging and timely issues affecting the globe. In response to rising social and ecological complexities, decision makers are faced with designing new policies and programs to effectively govern water resources. This shift towards new freshwater resource management approaches is in line with recent movement toward incentive-based mechanisms such as “Investments in Watershed Services” (IWS). The western United States contains one of the most concentrated IWS populations, in a time when population growth, intensifying land uses, and climate-induced environmental changes are stressing ecological systems in the region. My dissertation focuses on understanding this new arena of environmental governance aimed at freshwater conservation in the US West. Through three sets of data and analytical lenses I explore: the characterization of this new arena of governance, what led to its recent and significant growth, and what changes have occurred with respect to how such water resources were traditionally governed. I employ a mixed methods approach, using quantitative approaches to characterize the study population and temporal changes, and qualitative approaches to dive deeper into understanding specific phenomena. First, I improve understanding of IWS as an institution, and demonstrate the importance of dynamics between institutional factors for external context, program structure, and other related analytical domains in shaping how PWS is applied to water resources challenges globally. Through an institutional analysis of IWS and the use of cluster analysis to group programs around buyer types and management actions, I highlight the role of government, influence of geographic context, and role of both regional and local conditions in shaping IWS design and structure. Second, I demonstrate that government actors are essential to IWS in the region, expanding beyond existing regulations and traditional roles. This exploration of the role of government within adaptive governance shows the evolving and expanding role of government over time, from federal regulations driving early water quality management, then state legislation driving water quantity programs, and more recently, federal agencies partnering on local water source protection efforts. Third, I show how key individuals and organizations create voluntary IWS in response to risk, aligning policies, politics and problems into solution framing, which suggests policy process theories more explicitly consider social-ecological complexities. These programs constitute the most recent expansion of IWS in the US West, and applying a policy process theory sheds light into the formation of the IWS, and the political, economic, ecological and social components that aligned to make the programs possible. My research shows this new arena of environmental governance as adaptive, place and problem-based, learning and collaboration-focused, accepting of uncertainty, and containing nimble and adaptive government across scale. My work also creates a baseline of IWS in the region, and identifies areas for future research as IWS matures over time.Item Open Access Native soil: contest and control for land and resource rights in the Arctic(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2019) Hodgson, Kara, author; Betsill, Michele, advisor; Velasco, Marcela, advisor; Schultz, Courtney, committee memberThe Arctic is a dynamic region that over four million people in eight different countries call their home. Many of the residents belong to indigenous groups who have lived there for millennia. These groups have retained their traditional cultural practices, values, and livelihoods while also having had to adapt to contemporary realities. Since the mid-twentieth century, the region has been increasingly seen as an appealing option for the exploitation of vital natural resources. As such, there has been contestation between industrial actors and Arctic indigenous groups over control of the land and its resources. States have played a pivotal role in mediating the tensions arising from interests in extractive industry development and indigenous groups' rights. In each of the cases presented in this paper, the states have chosen to incorporate their indigenous populations as the solution, although each has done so in a decidedly different way. This paper traces the ways in which indigenous peoples have been incorporated and how their rights to their ancestral lands have been recognized in three different Arctic countries, particularly in situations where there are conflicting interests over the land usage. It posits that the unique historical evolution of institutions in each country, with their idiosyncratic path dependencies and critical junctures, explains why they, and why countries in general, vary in the methods of incorporation they choose.Item Open Access NEPA implementation and trust: linking stakeholder trust to substantive effectiveness in U.S. Forest Service fuels reduction projects(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2022) Hall, Hailey R., author; Scott, Ryan, advisor; Gottlieb, Madeline, committee member; Schultz, Courtney, committee memberTrust matters; but, rather than take it as a given, this study presents an empirical snapshot of how trust matters, what types of trust matter, and how those trust types interact within and on National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) substantive effectiveness. I define substantive effectiveness as the degree to which the policy meets its established aims of considering environmental effects and including the public in the process. Using documents and public comments from two U.S. Forest Service (USFS) Fuels Reduction projects in the Boulder Ranger District in Colorado, I assessed stakeholder trust judgements by coding trust types and frequencies. I then used process tracing to examine how stakeholder trust types interact with one another and relate to substantive effectiveness. I found that interpersonal trust, interpersonal distrust, and institutional distrust play prominent but varied roles within the NEPA process. First, interpersonal trust mediates the effect of institutional distrust on the substantive effectiveness of the NEPA process. Second, higher levels of institutional and interpersonal distrust result in more substantive changes in the NEPA environmental assessment process. Through improved understanding of the roles and functions of stakeholder trust types on the NEPA process, we add nuanced understanding to established expectations of how trust and distrust operate within natural resource planning and management.Item Open Access Public perceptions of the Colorado State Forest Service(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2014) Peterson, Courtney L., author; Vaske, Jerry, advisor; Bruyere, Brett, committee member; Timm, Katherine, committee member; Schultz, Courtney, committee memberThis Master's Thesis explored three main research questions pertaining to Colorado resident's perceptions of the Colorado State Forest Service (CSFS) and forest management practices. Data were obtained from a public perceptions of the CSFS survey (n = 416), which provided the first step to understanding Colorado residents' attitudes toward the agency and different forest management practices. Results from the public perceptions of the CSFS survey indicated that (a) Colorado residents' aesthetic evaluations of the nine forest management practices had a larger impact on their approval of those practices than their familiarity with them, except for creating wildfire defensible space, windbreaks, and fuelbreaks; (b) social trust is the largest predictor of overall satisfaction with the CSFS; and (c) level of education, household income, ethnicity, familiarity with the CSFS and forest management practices, and total knowledge of the CSFS were related to Colorado residents' awareness of their proximity to the wildland-urban interface (WUI). The results from the public perceptions of the CSFS survey will help the agency focus its outreach efforts to more effectively communicate with Colorado residents about the valuable services the agency provides. Only with effective outreach and education will the CSFS be able to change Colorado residents' attitudes about forest management practices and work to achieve the stewardship of Colorado's diverse forest ecosystems for the benefit of present and future generations.Item Open Access The state of collaboration: an analysis of form and function in Colorado's natural resource collaboratives(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2019) Huayhuaca, Ch'aska, author; Reid, Robin S., advisor; Fernández-Giménez, María, advisor; Schultz, Courtney, committee member; Theobald, David, committee memberTo view the abstract, please see the full text of the document.Item Open Access Willow growth response to altered disturbance regimes in Rocky Mountain National Park: herbivory, water levels, and hay production(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2021) Contento, Taryn Elizabeth, author; Sueltenfuss, Jeremy, advisor; Schultz, Courtney, committee member; Wohl, Ellen, committee memberDisturbances are essential to the perpetuation of functioning riparian areas. However, with westward expansion, riparian areas, with access to water, fertile soils, and abundant vegetation, have been the target of heavy human use and alteration. Disturbance regimes in riparian areas have been modified, and, as a result, riparian systems and their associated vegetation have been in decline across the United States. The west side of Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP) in the Kawuneeche Valley has a history of human use and landscape level modification ranging from altered elk and moose populations, hydrological modification from trans basin diversions, and a history of vegetation removal from hay production. This study sampled willow growth (height, cover, and annual growth) response to these overlapping altered disturbances in the Kawuneeche Valley. We found that the largest influence on willow growth was a high level of herbivory that could be attenuated by exclosures. Depth to water level did not significantly relate to willow growth, but a possible -100 cm water level threshold could explain conditions below which water levels would influence growth. Lastly, hay production decreased the overall presence of willows and therefore cover. Future research is needed to explain mechanisms behind these trends but the high levels of browse and decreased overall vigor of willows in the Kawuneeche Valley indicate increased management needs.