For many people, outdoor recreation provides one of the main opportunities to experience, interact with, and learn about forested landscapes. I believe that understanding this interface is important in addressing growing public concerns with, and expectations of, forest management.

 

Research Context
The management of publicly-owned forests in Canada has traditionally focused on timber production and economic outputs, and land-use decision-making processes have arguably been dominated by commercial and political interests. However, there has been a shift in forest management priorities toward the management of multiple values and a growing recognition of the important role of non-timber amenities, such as outdoor recreation values, in the sustainable forest management paradigm. As outdoor recreationists are not the sole users of forest resources, their needs and interests must be coordinated with other stakeholders. Outdoor recreation participation in Canada is fairly ubiquitous, given that 84.6% of Canadians participated in nature-related activities in 1996; the satisfaction of this stakeholder group ought, therefore, to be an important consideration among forest land-use managers and planners. My research broadly explores the role of recreation within a forest landscape management context.

 

Past Research
My past involvement in research has served to provide a foundation of research methods, the application of theoretical approaches, statistical analysis, and project management. The following describe some of the areas of investigation that my past research has addressed.

  • My dissertation research, Outdoor Recreation and Forest Land-Use Planning: An examination of user group participation and perceived representation in planning processes, investigated the role of social structure and recreation specialization in framing public perceptions of land-use planning outcomes in meeting the needs of outdoor recreationists. The cases of recreation in the Sea-to-Sky Corridor and Peace Foothills in British Columbia were used to explore the issues of the representation of outdoor recreation in land-use planning and the participation of recreationists in land-use planning. The widening array of outdoor recreation activities in high-use areas poses new challenges to the equitable participation of diverse recreation user groups in land-use planning. In an attempt to build a theoretical framework for understanding key relationships, this study measured recreationists’ perceptions of representation in land-use planning and their participation in land-use planning in the Sea-to-Sky Corridor and Peace Foothills. Moderate levels of perceived representation were found for most recreation groups, although some users seemed unclear about how well they were represented. Results suggested that recreation specialization and household income contributed to respondents’ perceptions of representation in land-use planning; age, recreation specialization, the number of recreation activities participated in, club membership and local residence contributed to respondents’ likelihood of having been a participant of a land-use planning process.
  • As a Post Doctoral Fellow at UBC I was involved in research that investigated the role of social structure (particularly the role of social networks in the creation and dispersal of social capital) in the development of social identity and the formation of social values that are related to forested landscapes and sustainable forest management.
  • My involvement in the Arrow Innovative Forest Practices Agreement contributed to the development and testing of spatial and temporal forest management models that coordinated outdoor recreation, ecology, economics, and timber operations in the Slocan Valley of the Kootenays.
  • I have worked to refine the outdoor recreation component of spatial models for the Canfor Sustainable Forest Management Project to reflect temporal implications of forest management assumptions for outdoor recreation in the Dawson Creek Forest District.
  • I led the incorporation of outdoor recreation indicators into a comprehensive forest-planning model for the Invermere Timber Supply Area in a project that investigated ecological, economic and social value trade-offs for alternative management strategies which considered sustainable forest management criteria at differing levels of priority.

 

Current Research
My current research builds on my past research experience and seeks to contribute to theoretical perspectives on human dimensions of natural resources from a Canadian context.

  • The Sustainable Forest Management Public Opinion Survey is a province-wide public opinion survey of sustainable forest management. In addition to examining public attitudes about, and preferences for, sustainable forest management, this research explores relationships between recreation specialization and forest management preferences.
  • Working with a colleague UBC, I am investigating the role of social structure in the development of social identity and the formation of social values as they relate to forested landscapes and sustainable forest management. We are employing a social network approach to examine the role that social capital plays in the relationships that people have with forested landscapes in order to identify the implications of these relationships to forest land-use planning. Preliminary results suggest that network range is directly related to identity diversity, which mediates the relationship between network range and forest value diversity, and that strong ties are relatively more important than weak ties in explaining the formation of identity and forest value diversity.
  • I find recreation specialization to be a compelling approach to understanding people’s recreation behaviour; I have two related projects examining various aspects of recreation specialization. Specifically, I am interested in understanding the relationship between recreation specialization and environmental attitudes using Riley Dunlap’s New Ecological Paradigm. I am also exploring the relationships between recreation specialization and preferences for sustainable forest management.

 

Future Research
In my plans for future research, I seek to refine my previous work on criteria and indicators for social values in sustainable forest management and spatial and temporal modeling of recreation opportunity. I am also interested in better understanding the relationships between recreation specialization and attitudes toward sustainable forest management.

  • I plan to continue my investigations of recreation specialization by examining the relationship between recreation specialization and social networks. In particular, I am interested in whether increased degrees of specialization contribute to increased access to social capital through social networks.
  • As part of my program of research, I have developed and assessed various criteria and indicator approaches to sustainable forest management within the context of outdoor recreation and quality of life values. Social indicators are in general weakly developed relative to ecological and economic indicators; standard criteria and indicator systems often omit crucial social indicators, or include them without specific definitions or measurable benchmarks. Further research is required that develops and tests cost-effective tools and processes usable by forest managers and others, for systematically eliciting preferences from stakeholders, increasing community understanding on sustainable forest management, and integrating social issues into forest planning and policy.

 

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