Oral Abstract Details

Author(s):
Dale J. Blahna and Kathy W. Wolf

Affiliation:
U.S. Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station

Presentation Type:
Oral

Topic Area:
Restoring/rehabilitating terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems ltered by urbanization

Abstract Text:
Landscapes across the wildland to urban gradient face increasing environmental pressures. Government agencies are able to identify and formulate policy to address these issues, yet do not have adequate resources to restore or mitigate many environmental systems. Urban natural resources stewardship is an emerging research and management approach within the US Forest Service. One research goal is to understand the role of citizen engagement and NGO efforts for ecosystem recovery. Stewardship activity generates potentially large and cumulative effects across landscape systems. In Seattle and Tacoma alone, there are nearly 600 organizations that conduct stewardship activities. Yet there is little literature on this benefit-based perspective of human agency in large scale systems. This paper will introduce new research in the Puget Sound region that investigates: (1) the scope, diversity, and outcomes of citizen based stewardship efforts, (2) environmental and social factors that motivate these efforts, and (3) the system wide effects – or “stewardship footprint” – of on-the-ground activities. In this work stewardship refers to the specific actions of engaged individuals, groups, and communities acting on behalf of natural systems. Stewardship action may be guided by peer leadership, environmental groups, ecologists, or professional planners, but is often compelled by personal connections to a particular place or declining natural resource. Landscape and regional scale benefits can accrue from local stewardship efforts, yet systematic studies of the spatial distribution and the outputs, outcomes, and co-benefits of stewardship have not been pursued. In the performance measurement literature, outputs are thought of as the work done by those working within a particular program (e.g. number of trees planted) while outcomes are not what the program itself did but the broader social and ecological consequences of activity. Little is known about how outputs and outcomes may or may not align with the purposes of stewardship programs. Co-benefits of stewardship are the supplemental or secondary social, economic, and ecological effects that are a consequence of ecological restoration. Co-benefits are a bridge to broader societal or community objectives. Initial studies of stewardship within urban areas suggest that environmentally targeted activity is a stated purpose, but that social consequences are at least as important to many organizers and participants. Within a Puget Sound regional context this paper will summarize current literature on stewardship, and present a framework that addresses the topic across the entire urban to wildland interface, noting potential organizational dynamics, outputs, and outcomes that are shared or may differ across the landscape gradient.