Central Oregon Human Ecology Mapping Project

The results of this study are available for download here:

Socio-Ecological Interactions in the National Forests and Grasslands of Central Oregon: A Summary of Human Ecology Mapping Results 

(2019). David Banis, Rebecca McLain, Alicia Milligan, Krystle Harrell, and Lee Cerveny, Occasional Papers in Geography No. 8. http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/31028

In 2015, the Institute for Sustainable Solutions (ISS) and PSU’s Department of Geography entered into a collaborative partnership with the US Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest (PNW) Research Station to collect place-based social science data for national forest planning. Known as the Central Oregon Human Ecology Mapping Project, our project uses maps as a tool for documenting how humans are connected to the landscapes in which they live, work, and play. Our project is a good example of how a transdisciplinary partnership between scientists, land managers, and community organizations can facilitate the collection and use of policy-relevant social science data. 

Dr. Rebecca McLain, social scientist with ISS and Dr. Lee Cerveny, environmental anthropologist with the PNW Research Station, co-led the project. David Banis, Associate Director for PSU’s Center for Spatial Analysis and Research, supervised the technical team. Other partners included the Deschutes and Ochoco National Forests, the Crooked River National Grassland, the Forest Service’s Region 6 Office in Portland and Discover Your Forest, a non-profit organization located in Bend. Over the course of three years, eight PSU students worked on the project, including two undergraduates, four Masters students, and two PhD candidates.

Our goal was to learn how the public uses the Deschutes and Ochoco National Forests and Crooked River National Grassland. These forests and grasslands encompass 2.6 million acres stretching from the crest of the Oregon Cascades eastward into the heart of the Ochoco Mountains. Landscapes in this ecologically diverse area include the alpine glaciers and moist conifer forests of the high peaks, the dry forests of “yellow-belly” ponderosa pine and “dog-hair” lodgepole pine in the Cascade range foothills and Ochoco Mountains, and the sage-juniper woodlands and grasslands of Oregon’s high desert. Although the ecological characteristics of these landscapes are well-documented, the Forest Service has little data about which places are important to particular population sub-groups, why those places are important to them, what they do while they are at those places, and what they see as threats to the places that they value.

To address this knowledge gap, our team created a digital mapping application—both an online and an offline version—that allowed local residents and visitors to describe where they go on these public lands and why they go there. Representatives from the seven partnering organizations collaborated in designing the study and developing the survey questions. Three PSU Geography graduate students worked together to create the online and offline mapping applications and associated survey application. Gabriel Rousseau developed the interactive customized base map; Tim Hitchins designed the web mapping application; and Zuriel van Belle developed the survey applications. To extend the study’s reach, we created both English and Spanish versions of the applications as well as a version suitable for visually impaired forest users. 

The online web map survey, which participants accessed through Discover Your Forest’s website, went live in October 2016 and remained active for a year. The offline version came into play in summer 2017 when the Forest Service hired Katie Stanton, an OSU-Cascade student, as a community engagement intern.

During her two-month internship, Katie participated in a dozen community events, staffing a booth where she helped participants complete the offline survey on tablets. A summer highlight for the PSU team was a field trip to central Oregon to assist Katie with data collection at the Central Oregon Crafts Market in Bend and Elk Lake Lodge Resort near Mount Bachelor. David, Rebecca, and Tim were joined by two undergraduate students, Kristin Purdy, and Kristen Sellers, for the field trip, which, in addition to data collection, provided an opportunity for the team to camp along the upper reaches of the Deschutes River.  Over the course of a year, 542 people provided mappable data, with 459 persons using the online application and 83 the offline version. 

An ongoing challenge human ecology mappers face is that conservation planners often either don’t know where to get social science data or don’t use it when it is available. To increase the chances that our data would be used, we involved scientists, planners, and decision makers from the Forest Service from the very beginning. However, while the online survey was live, it became clear that, in addition to consulting with Forest and Regional staff, we also needed to get buy-in and input from planners and specialists working on the Ranger Districts that make up each National Forest.

On March 14, 2018, we co-hosted with Forest and Regional staff a day-long workshop for District, Forest, and Regional planners and specialists likely to have a need for social science data in their jobs. Nearly 30 Forest Service employees participated in the workshop, which was held in Redmond, Oregon. The workshop’s interactive discussions focused on identifying ways to analyze our data so that Forest Service staff could readily use the resulting maps and charts. Between mid-January and mid-March, two PSU Geography graduate students, Nikki Harrell and Alicia Milligan, worked with David to create more than 100 maps and charts for the workshop.

 The workshop participants were very supportive of the project. As the following quotes illustrate, they described a number of ways in which the data could help them with their jobs.

 “This feeds our wilderness strategy effort – it helps to tell the story visually with user comments beyond what we can get through trailhead registration information.”

“It’s a great visual resource to increase awareness of high-density use areas.”

“It can be used for near-term planning, not just plan revision.”

The participants identified additional analyses they would like to see. For example, wildlife biologists asked us to create a map overlaying the human ecology mapping data with wildlife areas so that they could more easily identify potential areas of conflict. Recreation planners were interested in having maps broken down into finer use categories so that they could more easily identify areas where wilderness users and mountain bikers congregate. As well, participants noted some gaps in our data, such as the lack of information about frequency and seasonality of use, that future mapping studies could fill. 

The Central Oregon Human Ecology Mapping Project has yielded a variety of benefits for PSU and its partners. The many students involved in the project have learned a variety of skills, including how to create web maps and design a social science survey, as well as diverse techniques for analyzing and visualizing spatially explicit social science data. The Principal Investigators on the project (Lee, Rebecca, David) have gained an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of interactive web mapping as a data collection and community engagement tool. The project has strengthened connections between the Institute for Sustainable Solutions and Forest Service scientists, planners, and land managers at multiple levels of the agency. And, perhaps most importantly, the Deschutes and Ochoco National Forests, Crooked River National Grassland, and Discover Your Forest now have at their finger tips a rich dataset that will enable them to better understand who uses those public lands, what they use them for, and the types of activities that forest users perceive as threats to their enjoyment of the places they value.

Acknowledgements: We thank the numerous persons who participated in the project at various points but who were not mentioned in this article. Chief among these are: Yewah Lau, Jean Nelson-Dean, Patrick Lair, Joe Otts, Michelle King, Brian Lefler, Cheryl Friesen, Elisabeth Grinspoon, Nikola Smith, Rika Ayotte, Ben Nechanicky, and Diane Besser.

PROJECT PARTICIPANTS

David Banis, PSU Geography, Center for Spatial Analysis and Research

Lee Cerveny, US Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station

Nikki Harrell, PSU MS Geography

Tim Hitchins, PSU MS Geography

Rebecca McLain, PSU Institute for Sustainable Solutions, PSU Geography Affiliated Faculty

Alicia Milligan, PSU Graduate Certificate in GIS

Kristen Purdy, PSU BS Environmental Science and Management

Zuriel Rasmussen, PSU MS Geography

Gabriel Rousseau, PSU Graduate Certificate GIS

Kristin Sellers, PSU BS Geography

Katie Stanton, OSU-Cascades

PROJECT PARTNERS

Deschutes and Ochoco National Forests

Discover Your Forest

US Forest Service Region 6

The project was funded through agreements with the PNW Research Station (12-JV-11261985-079, 2012-CR-11261985-084), and through a memorandum of understanding with Discover Your Forest.