Conference Sessions and Presentations
Presentations:
Am I doing something wrong?": A usability evaluation of a PPGIS interactive map application
Zuriel van Belle and David Banis, Portland State University
GIS in Action Conference, Portland, OR, April 2019
A Tale of Two Forests: Mapping Cultural Ecosystem Services in Central Oregon Using Public Participation GIS
Rebecca McLain, David Banis, and Lee Cerveny:
International Association for Landscape Ecology Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL April 2018
What we know and don’t know about human ecology mapping: Lessons from the field
David Banis and Rebecca McLain
Poster presented at the Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting, April 2018
Assessing Interactive Web Map Usability: A Case Study in PPGIS Data Production
Tim Hitchins
Portland Cartography Symposium, Portland, OR, March 2018
What we know and don’t know about Public Participatory GIS : An Eight-Year Retrospective
David Banis and Rebecca McLain
Portland State University School of the Environment Speaker Series, Nov 2017
Using sociocultural PPGIS data for environmental planning: A case study of travel analysis for national forests
David Banis
Oregon State University Geography Seminar March 2017
Analyzing Public Participation Data for Transportation Planning in the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest
Alexa Todd and David Banis:
GIS in Action Conference, Vancouver, WA, May 2015
Quantifying the qualitative: GIS analysis of sociocultural values from participatory mapping
Alexa Todd and David Banis
GIS in Action Conference, Portland, OR, May 2013
Mapping the Human Ecology of the Olympic Peninsula
David Banis
Friends of Olympic National Park Speaker Series, Port Angeles, WA, March 2013
Mapping landscape values and human-resource interactions on a regional scale: The human ecology mapping project,
Lee Cerveny, Rebecca McLain, Diane Besser, and Kelly Biedenweg
Ecological Society of America Annual Meeting, Portland, OR, August 2012
Conference Sessions:
Human Ecology Mapping: Case Studies and Applications in National Forest Planning and Management
Session organized by Lee Cerveny for the Society for Applied Anthropology Annual Meeting, March 2019
Participatory GIS increasingly has been used to generate socio-spatial data to inform public lands planning and management worldwide. The use of maps to collect, aggregate and communicate data about landscape values and resource interactions has proven useful to public agencies. This session explores examples of social scientists engaged in Human Ecology Mapping efforts with public land managers and partners in the Pacific Northwest to inform long-term planning and decision-making. Cases include use of online mapping applications, stakeholder workshops, and mixed-method approaches. Case comparisons and reflections ensure that socio-spatial data can be readily applied to address real-world resource challenges.
What human ecology mapping data can tell us: A case study from forests in Central Oregon
David Banis, Rebecca McLain, Krystle Harrell, Alicia Milligan
The Deschutes and Ochoco National Forests, in anticipation of updating their forest plans to comply with the 2012 Forest Planning Rule, wished to explore ways to collect data about human values and uses of the forest. In support of this effort, we created an interactive web-mapping application to collect sociocultural data from a broad spectrum of forest users. Through data disaggregation by demographics and use characteristics, and employing a number of spatial analysis techniques, we are able to discover some distinct spatial patterns of forest visitation and activity diversity, as well as threats to the experience of specific places.
Integrating Socio-spatial Data into Forest Planning: Lessons from the Central Oregon Human Ecology Mapping Project
Rebecca McLain, Lee Cerveny, David Banis, BANIS, Lis Grinspoon, and Cheryl Friesen
Public participation GIS (PPGIS) has become an important method for collecting socio-spatial data about cultural values associated with forest landscapes. Yet PPGIS practitioners consistently report difficulties with getting planners to integrate such data into their GIS-based analyses. Resistance to PPGIS data is attributed to planners’ concerns about its representativeness, lack of familiarity with socio-spatial data, and skepticism about qualitative data. Our presentation describes key features of a partnership between the US Forest Service and Portland State University that was designed to maximize the likelihood that cultural values data collected through a web-based mapping application would be used by planners.
Mapping Favored Outdoor Places and Activities with Urban Latinx Recreation Users in the Portland Metropolitan Area (Oregon, USA)
Lee Cerveny, Jorge Guzman, Rebecca McLain, David Banis, and Matthew Helmer
National forests and grasslands are mandated to involve citizens and use the best available science in forest planning, according to 2012 planning rule revisions. Yet, some communities and groups have been historically under-represented in these efforts. The U.S. Forest Service has asked social scientists to develop innovative approaches to engage under-represented groups in public processes. Workshops were held in the Portland area with Latinx outdoor recreation enthusiasts to understand more about their desired outdoor activities, preferred destinations, and barriers to accessing public lands. Human Ecology Mapping was employed to identify places of importance and their associated features, benefits, and activities.
Human Ecology Mapping in a Checkerboarded and Urban-Proximate Landscape: Community Forest Values of the Central Cascades, Washington
Matthew Helmer, Lee Cerveny, and Jennifer Lipton
Land managers are taking an ‘all hands, all lands’ approach to planning, which incorporates various public and private land owners and stakeholder groups in collaborative co-management. In Washington’s Central Cascades, the Tapash Sustainable Forest Collaborative is restoring forest landscapes to healthy conditions while strengthening public access and use. We used a Human Ecology Mapping approach to identify public uses, ecosystem benefits, and management needs in a targeted restoration area. Results reflected diverse use patterns and land connections, particularly among urban and rural users. Results also have implications for better understanding socio-spatial values associated checkerboarded landscapes, with direct connections to planning.
Does gender matter in the Global North? PPGIS as a tool for exploring differences in men and women’s value and use of national forests, monuments, and parks in five North American settings
Session organized by Lee Cerveny, Rebecca McLain, and David Banis for the Society for Applied Anthropology Annual Meeting, March 2017
Few studies have investigated gendered interactions with forests and natural resources in the Global North. Public participation GIS approaches utilize maps and aerial photos to explore landscape values, land uses, and ecosystem services. These tools offer insights about whether men and women participate differently with natural landscapes. This session features papers using PPGIS to explore landscape interactions at multiple scales in different U.S. regions. We examine differences between men and women in terms of outdoor locations, frequency of visits, resource activities, and landscape values. Our findings indicate important gender differences and concludes that gender does matter in the Global North.
The place of gender: Landscape values of residents and visitors on the Olympic Peninsula (Washington, USA)
David Banis, Rebecca McLain, and Lee Cerveny
Human ecology mapping provides map-based depictions of the complex connections between humans and their environment and can be used to explore the different ways that men and women interact with and value landscapes. This analysis draws from two different public participation GIS studies conducted at the regional scale of the Olympic Peninsula: workshop surveys of residents at eight locations and intercept surveys of visitors at fourteen sites. The type of values and activities mapped as well as their spatial configuration and distribution varied greatly for men and women residents, but exhibited more similarity for men and women visitors.
Who’s in the woods and why? Gender differences in forest uses and values in central Oregon (USA)
Rebecca McLain, David Banis, and Lee Cerveny
Public participation GIS (PPGIS) is becoming an important public engagement tool for forest management. In the Global North, PPGIS participants are disproportionately men, raising questions about how well decisions based on PPGIS data reflect the concerns of women. Drawing on data collected through a web mapping application for the Deschutes National Forest (Oregon, USA), we explore how men and women forest users differ in where they go on the forest, what they do while there, and the values they associate with forested ecosystems. Our work illustrates the importance of incorporating gender analyses in forest management decision-making in the Global North.
Gendered landscapes in Western North Carolina
Lee Cerveny and Diane Styers (Western Carolina University)
Public participation GIS provides opportunities to compare landscape interactions between men and women at various spatial scales. This study takes place at the bio-regional scale in western North Carolina, which encompasses seven counties, two national forests, a national park; tribal, state, and private lands. We used a convenience sample to gather data at five public events (n=117). Participants identified five important outdoor places and assigned landscape values and predominant activities to those locations. Our analysis reveals that men identified locations broadly across the region, while women identified a more select group of locations and chose distinct areas.
Exploring Multiple Meanings and Land Use Patterns in Browns Canyon National Monument (Colorado, USA)
Rebecca Gronewald (University of Colorado - Colorado Springs) and Lee Cerveny
In 2015, President Obama designated 21,586 acres along the upper reaches of the Arkansas River in the southern Colorado Rockies as the Browns Canyon National Monument. Biophysical resources of the canyon had been inventoried by the US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. In 2016, socio-spatial information was gathered through a series of listening sessions and an interactive online mapping program about the region’s land tenure and land use history, role in shaping local identity, contemporary land uses, and the meanings associated with Browns Canyon by residents, visitors, and stakeholders. In this paper, we explore differences among men and women, including the locations they visit, the values associated with these places, and the resource activities they engage in. Results reveal important insights for land managers when planning services, facilities, and outreach to constituents of Browns Canyon.
Participatory GIS (PGIS): Approaches, Methods, Tools, Results, Ethics
Session organized by Rebecca McLain, Lee Cerveny, David Banis for the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers Annual Meeting, October 2016
Participatory GIS is an approach designed by social scientists and ecologists to capture diverse human values and activities in spatial format for terrestrial, coastal, marine, and urban environments or infrastructure. Geographers and other social scientists are increasingly being asked to provide spatialized sociocultural data that can be readily integrated with GIS-based biophysical data layers. However, collecting, analyzing, interpreting, and using geospatial data on values and human uses of ecosystems poses a number of challenges. The presenters in this session describe various approaches used to capture cultural values and human-resource interactions. They explore some of these challenges and identify ways to address them.
Mapping for Managers: Barriers and Opportunities in the Use of PPGIS in National Forest Planning
Diane Besser:
The burgeoning field of PPGIS offers numerous methodologies and tools for collecting socio-spatial data useful to planners and land managers as they struggle to understand human-environment interactions and balance environmental, social, and economic values and objectives. However, there is little information about how PPGIS and socio-spatial data are being effectively and consistently applied in land management decisions. This presentation focuses on preliminary results from a study that seeks to identify challenges and barriers in integrating socio-spatial data into national forest planning. U.S. Forest Service implementation of a new forest planning rule – with its emphasis on cultural services, public involvement and environmental justice – provides a robust case study in which to analyze the extent to which PPGIS tools are being utilized and socio-spatial data are being applied in the development of national forest management plans. Thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with U.S. Forest Service employees offers insight into structural, organizational, perceptual and external factors that represent barriers to using PPGIS tools in planning decisions as well as potential avenues for overcoming barriers and facilitating the use of these tools and data in planning contexts.
Toward the use of sociocultural PPGIS data: Travel management analysis for national forests
David Banis, Alexa Todd, Rebecca McLain, and Lee Cerveny
To account for insufficient funding to maintain the National Forest road system, in 2005 a Travel Management Rule was passed that required all national forests to analyze their road system by 2015. These travel analyses provide a detailed evaluation of road conditions and maintenance costs, susceptibility to erosion, floods and landslides, wildlife habitat, vegetation, hydrology, and access for logging. However, it is unclear how social uses of the forest factored into the analysis. In this paper, we draw on our involvement in the public engagement process for travel planning for the Mt Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. We analyzed spatial data provided by community workshops and an online survey and developed a number of methods to provide a nuanced look at how the roads are used by the public. Methods developed included density calculations for road use and destinations, a calculation of the diversity of uses for road segments, and a method to compare destinations from mapped data with that collected as text descriptions online. These outputs provide ways that forest planners can actually incorporate sociocultural data into their existing analyses in a manner comparable to how they incorporate physical characteristics of the road system.
What do managers prioritize?: Evaluating the impact of PPGIS data on Shoreline Master Planning
Kelly Biedenweg, Bessie Schwartz, and Jacqueline Delie
For many, the goal of collecting PPGIS data is to inform natural resource management. The questions still remains, however: how do these data actually inform managers? Particularly with respect to social data, we know that there are plenty of heuristics and biases that influence the ability of individuals (including managers) to accept new information and re-organization their thinking accordingly. For this study, 14 people at different levels of management were interviewed within one year of making a decision on their Shoreline Master Plans (SMP). We used cognitive mapping to understand their priorities associated with making this decision and how they cognitively organized those priorities in their mental model. They then explored an interactive web-based tool that represented PPGIS data collected from residents across the Olympic Peninsula about values they associated with specific areas. Following this interaction, they were welcomed to add any items to their SMP considerations. This presentation will present the original priorities for resource managers and the changes that were made immediately following access to PPGIS social data.
Wayfinding in the Cully neighborhood of Portland, Oregon: Using community feedback to connect people to neighborhood parks
Kevin Donohue and Rebecca McLain:
Participatory mapping provides a qualitative approach for researchers collecting information about the built environment. Utilizing this data can help organizations fix existing systems or better inform future developments. By collecting community feedback using spatial data the researcher has an additional tool for further understanding the spatial connections between people, places, and groups. This research focuses on Portland’s Cully neighborhood and the role participatory mapping played in the development of a wayfinding system for navigating to parks. Cully’s late addition to the city resulted in inadequate transportation infrastructure and connectivity issues throughout the neighborhood. Participatory mapping and wayfinding workshops provided important feedback on transportation barriers throughout the neighborhood and ultimately assisted in the design process of the wayfinding system. Cully’s transportation network still has many barriers and the hope is that tools like participatory mapping can help improve the neighborhood by providing safe navigation to parks.
Rebecca McLain and Zuriel Rasmussen:
Thanks to the widespread popularity of interactive web maps,many organizations now want to use such tools to engage the public and collect data, even if they are not sure exactly what they want the tool to do, what questions should be asked, and how it wouldactually function to collect the desired data. This two-part paper describes the development of an online mapping and survey tool for collecting data about public values, forest uses, and ecosystems services in support of forest plan revisions for the Deschutes and Ochoco National Forests in central Oregon. We describe the pitfalls and lessons learned in the development of this data collection tool, a focus that is notably absent from the work of most participatory GIS scholars, who focus on reporting their results and analyses, but rarely describe in any detail their data collection methods.
Part 1 describes the intent of the public engagement process, wordsmithing the survey, how the survey questions linked to the mapping application, and the development of a protocol for the visually impaired.
Gabriel Rousseau, Timothy Hitchins, and David Banis
Part 2 describes the creation of a custom multiscale map for the forests, the issues associated with customizing the map application, and taking the map and survey applications offline.
Using Participatory GIS to Understand Outdoor Space Visitation Patterns
Jenna Tilt, Lee Cerveny, and Amir Sheikh
We use a PGIS approach to gather data and analyze the relationship between residential location and public use of outdoor space. We collected data that reflected outdoor space visitation patterns from residents of King County, Washington by attending public markets county-wide. Participants completed a questionnaire to determine favorite outdoor spaces to visit; frequency of visits, duration of visits, and the activities they engaged in. Participants noted the cross-streets identifying their primary residence and placed stickers on a map to indicate favorite outdoor locations, allowing a measure of distance travelled. We found that residential location along the urban-to-rural continuum can influence the distance traveled to a public open space, the frequency of visits, duration of use, and the activities engaged in. By integrating our dataset with existing county datasets, we were able to relate overall visitation patterns with open space management. Kernel Density and Optimized Hotspot Analysis were also used to identify key clusters of favorite outdoor spaces and visitation patterns. Employing a PGIS approach provided new insights and challenges to our data collection strategy, data analysis, and interpretation of the results. We will discuss lessons learned and recommendations for future studies and strategies to effectively communicate PGIS results to practitioners.
Deconstructing recreation for its values
Katherine Williams, Kelly Biedenweg, and Lee Cerveny:
Most environmental conflict stems from opposing values ascribed to a place; thus, understanding the values and uses associated with natural areas is critical for long term, sustainable management. For this reason, values mapping is commonly used in natural resource planning. Recreation is an oft-cited value people attach to natural areas. However, recreation itself is not a value by psychological definition. This study seeks to identify which values are associated with the concept of recreation to better inform natural resource planning. Students in 2 natural resource courses at Oregon State University, students at Western Carolina University, and trail users at Bent Creek Recreational Area were given maps of their area. Along with providing demographic information, participants marked 5 places they found meaningful on the map and indicated values they attributed to each selected location based on a set list. Participants were randomly assigned either a list including recreation as a value or one excluding recreation.
Cultural Values Mapping Using Participatory GIS: Methods, Maps, and Meanings (Session I, II, and II)
Session organized by Rebecca McLain and David Banis for the Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting, April 2013
Cultural values mapping is an approach designed by social scientists and ecologists to capture diverse human values onto a geo-spatial landscape, including terrestrial, coastal, and marine environments. Geographers and other social scientists are increasingly being asked to provide spatialized sociocultural data that can be readily integrated with GIS-based biophysical data layers. However, collecting, analyzing, and interpreting geospatial data on values and human uses of ecosystems poses a number of challenges. The panelists in this session describe various approaches used to capture landscape values and human-resource interactions. They explore some of these challenges and identify ways to address them. Possible topics of interest may include, but are not limited to: Creating a base map (level of detail, scale, units); Fieldwork and data collection strategies; The art of mapping: Making sense of how people map; What the maps mean: Interpreting results; Integrating socio-spatial data with other data layers; Maps for managers: How maps are used in planning and management.
Mapping Sociocultural Values of Visitors to the Olympic Peninsula, WA
Alexa Todd
"Our Olympics Are Wild Enough”: The Politics of Values Mapping on the Olympic Peninsula, WA
Rebecca McLain
The past decade has seen the emergence of numerous landscape values mapping efforts designed to produce sociocultural data that can be integrated with biophysical data layers in ecosystem planning. Typically these studies take collections of relatively imprecise mental maps and apply statistical procedures to assess relationships between particular types of values and landscape features. These relationships are then used to inform planning and management decisions. Few of these studies pay much attention to how the way in which people choose to map landscape values affects subsequent analyses. Yet the history of cartography is replete with examples of both subtle and overt attempts to use maps and mapping to further particular political interests. This presentation draws on recent experiences with mapping cultural values on Washington's Olympic Peninsula to draw attention to the political nature of such mapping projects. Specifically, we explore how participants in several communities organized themselves to carry out strategic mapping aimed at ensuring that their landscape values would dominate maps produced through the project. We argue that the data produced through cultural values mapping is highly problematic and analyses of such data need to take into account the politics that shape who is at the mapping table and how people represent their values on the map.
Claiming experiential territory: Participatory mapping and concepts of place
David Banis
Drawing on the work from several projects mapping sociocultural values on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State, this paper explores the different ways that places are conceptualized during the process of participatory mapping. Residents, visitors, and stakeholder groups were asked to identify places of importance on a regional map and attach values to those places. By quantifying these qualitative data, GIS analysis shows large variations in the geometries of mapped areas representing particular sociocultural values and resource activities with strong affinities for certain values. These marks on the map suggest that participants conceptualize both abstract and concrete constructs of place, and interact differently with the landscape based on who they are, where they live, and what they like to do. When combined with these interactions with the map, the narratives of these participants help inform how people connect experiences to representations of place.
Ten additional presentations were made.
Mapping Sociocultural Values for Ecosystem Management: Theory, Methods, and Challenges From Field Work on the Olympic Peninsula
Session organized by Rebecca McLain and David Banis for the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers Annual Meeting, October 2012
Participatory GIS is an approach designed by social scientists and ecologists to capture diverse human values and activities in spatial format for terrestrial, coastal, marine, and urban environments or infrastructure. Geographers and other social scientists are increasingly being asked to provide spatialized sociocultural data that can be readily integrated with GIS-based biophysical data layers. However, collecting, analyzing, interpreting, and using geospatial data on values and human uses of ecosystems poses a number of challenges. The presenters in this session describe various approaches used to capture cultural values and human-resource interactions. They explore some of these challenges and identify ways to address them.
Lee Cerveny: The Human Ecology Mapping Project
Diane Besser: Mapping Human Values: A Review of Workshop Design and Data Processing Considerations
Methods and Challenges of Mapping Visitor Perspectives on the Olympic Peninsula, Washington
Alexa Todd and David Banis:
During the summer of 2012, we conducted field work in the Olympic Peninsula that complements the resident data collected by the Human Ecology Mapping Project with visitor data. To get visitor input on places they value and visit, our survey asks participants to mark a map and then attach values to the locations on an accompanying survey. The survey was administered to visitors at a variety of locations including visitor centers, campgrounds, trail access points, and a ferry. The objectives of the survey are: 1) identify a simple typology of Olympic Peninsula visitors, 2) understand the nature and intensity of activities of visitors and the values they attach to the landscape, and 3) analyze the values/activities of visitors compared to those of locals. While this study is still in progress, the field work phase has resulted in many lessons regarding the strengths and weaknesses of survey design, process, and research locations.
Exploring GIS Analytical Methods for Cultural Values Data
Corinna Kimball-Brown, Alexa Todd and David Banis:
This paper/presentation explores spatial analysis methods for cultural values data collected from residents of the Olympic Peninsula by the Human Ecology Mapping Project. The methods explored include density and diversity analysis, integration of biophysical data and analysis of polygon shape and size. The data was disaggregated into subcategories based on the type of value or activity and the demographics and geographic location of the participants. We assess appropriate methods for quantitative analysis of sociocultural information using a GIS and discuss some of the drawbacks and limits of such an analysis.