AUTHORS: Rebecca McLain*, Portland State University; Lee Cerveny, US Forest Service PNW Research Station; David Banis, Portland State University
ABSTRACT: The 2012 Forest Planning Rule that governs the development of national forest plans in the US specifies the use of ecosystem services as a guiding framework and calls for greater integration of human values and uses into forest planning. Public participation GIS (PPGIS), which facilitates the collection of socio-spatial data from the public, has the potential to address these mandates by enabling the collection of cultural services data about forested landscapes while expanding public engagement opportunities. Our presentation reports the findings from a pilot project conducted during 2016-2017 in which an interactive web-mapping application was used to collect cultural services data from users of the Deschutes and Ochoco National Forests in Oregon. We use spatial analysis techniques, including density and diversity analyses, to describe how the two forests differ in terms of the cultural services mapped by forest users and the range of cultural services each forest provides. Disaggregating the data along socio-demographic dimensions enables us to identify distinct differences in the cultural services associated with each forest according to the age, length of residency, income, and gender of forest users. We examine cultural services “hotspots” in greater detail to determine whether specific types of services are associated with particular ecological contexts. Our analyses indicate that the cultural services associated with the two forests differ significantly despite their close proximity to each other. The Deschutes National Forest PPGIS data reflect a landscape dominated by recreationists whereas the Ochoco National Forest data reflect a landscape in the midst of transitioning from a production-oriented landscape toward one that is increasingly recreation-oriented. Our study offers insights on the usefulness of PPGIS as a tool for integrating spatialized cultural services data into environmental planning processes; however, it also identifies some of the limitations of web-based applications for collecting such data.
