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Stakeholder Webinar: Understanding the Human Dimensions of Private Lands Conservation and Management
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Series of speakers on human dimensions of working with private landowners to effect conservation.
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Resources
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Facilitating Local Stakeholder Participation in Collaborative Landscape Conservation Planning
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Landscape-scale conservation enables conservation professionals to understand the biological and social factors at work across a broad range of traditional geopolitical boundaries. With a solid understanding of these factors comes the ability to make sound management decisions based on desired future conditions. However, even the most informed decisions rely on the support of local stakeholders to become successful on the ground. Join host Brad Milley from the National Wildlife Refuge System and Dr. Catherine Doyle-Capitman as they discuss the different scales at which conservation occurs and the importance of integrating local stakeholder participation and social data into collaborative landscape conservation planning. Shared by the FWS through the National Conservation Training Center.
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Training
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Training Resources Exchange
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Revealing the Role of Local Stakeholders in Landscape Conservation Design: A Social Science Inquiry
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What is the role of local stakeholders and social data in the Landscape Conservation Design (LCD) process?
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News & Events
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Events
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Human Dimensions Success Stories in Bird Conservation
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The greater bird conservation community has identified a need for human dimensions success stories to be collected, organized, and shared with the community.
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News & Events
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Western North Carolina Vitality Index
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A tool developed to provide information necessary in protecting the region’s unique natural resources, promote development and planning that accommodates healthy growth, preserve the heritage and culture that defines communities, and strengthen public health to improve local economies. The Index was developed by University of North Carolina-Asheville National Environmental Modeling and Analysis Center from the result of a partnership between the US Forest Service, the NC Mountain Resources Commission, the Blue Ridge National Heritage Area, the Asheville Board of Realtors and Duke Energy. The current iteration of the index contains over 160 different data metrics for each of the western 27 counties in NC. The information is classified into natural, built, human and economic sectors. Data and maps can be downloaded, spatially examined, and compared with state and national averages. A map viewer function allows users to customize their own maps for specific reports, grant applications, and general education and various presentations.
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Cultural Resources
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Socioeconomics
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Socio-economic Tools
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Central Appalachia Prosperity Project
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The Central Appalachia Prosperity Project is part of the Presidential Climate Action Project to develop policy recommendations on climate and energy security, with a focus on what the next President of the United States could accomplish using his or her executive authority. The Central Appalachian Project draws on the input of America's most innovative experts to produce policy and program recommendations that are sufficiently bold to expedite the region's transition to a clean energy economy. An important component of these recommendations has been better coordination of the efforts being made by all levels of government - federal, regional, state and local.
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Cultural Resources
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Socioeconomics
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Socio-economic Projects
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Human Dimensions Foundations of Natural Resource Conservation
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This course will foster a common understanding and application of human dimensions of natural resource conservation.
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News & Events
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Events
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Conservation in a social-ecological system experiencing climate-induced tree mortality
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We present a social-ecological framework to provide insight into climate adaptation strategies and diverse perspectives on interventions in protected areas for species experiencing climate-induced impacts. To develop this framework, we examined the current ecological condition of a culturally and commercially valuable species, considered the predicted future effects of climate change on that species in a protected area, and assessed the perspectives held by forest users and managers on future adaptive practices. We mapped the distribution of yellow-cedar (Callitropsis nootkatensis) and examined its health status in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve by comparing forest structure, tree stress-indicators, and associated thermal regimes between forests inside the park and forests at the current latitudinal limit of the species dieback. Yellow-cedar trees inside the park were healthy and relatively unstressed compared to trees outside the park that exhibited reduced crown fullness and increased foliar damage. Considering risk factors for mortality under future climate scenarios, our vulnerability model indicated future expected dieback occurring within park boundaries. Interviews with forest users and managers revealed strong support for increasing monitoring to inform interventions outside protected areas, improving management collaboration across land designations, and using a portfolio of interventions on actively managed lands. Study participants who perceived humans as separate from nature were more opposed to inter- ventions in protected areas. Linking social and ecological analyses, our study provides an interdisciplinary approach to identify system-specific metrics (e.g., stress indicators) that can better connect monitoring with management, and adaptation strategies for species impacted by climate change.
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Resources
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Climate Science Documents
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Global non-linear effect of temperature on economic production
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Growing evidence demonstrates that climatic conditions can have a profound impact on the functioning of modern human societies (1,2), but effects on economic activity appear inconsistent. Fundamental productive elements of modern economies, such as workers and crops, exhibit highly non-linear responses to local temperature even in wealthy countries (3,4). In contrast, aggregate macroeconomic productivity of entire wealthy countries is reported not to respond to temperature (5), while poor countries respond only linearly (5,6). Resolving this conflict between micro and macro observations is critical to understanding the role of wealth in coupled human–natural systems (7,8) and to anticipating the global impact of climate change (9,10). Here we unify these seemingly contradictory results by accounting for non-linearity at the macro scale. We show that overall economic productivity is non- linear in temperature for all countries, with productivity peaking at an annual average temperature of 13 6C and declining strongly at higher temperatures. The relationship is globally generalizable, unchanged since 1960, and apparent for agricultural and non-agricultural activity in both rich and poor countries. These results provide the first evidence that economic activity in all regions is coupled to the global climate and establish a new empirical foundation for modelling economic loss in response to climate change (11,12), with important implications. If future adaptation mimics past adaptation, unmitigated warming is expected to reshape the global economy by reducing average global incomes roughly 23% by 2100 and widening global income inequality, relative to scenarios without climate change. In contrast to prior estimates, expected global losses are approximately linear in global mean temperature, with median losses many times larger than leading models indicate.
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Resources
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Climate Science Documents
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Human domination of the biosphere: Rapid discharge of the earth-space battery foretells the future of humankind
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Earth is a chemical battery where, over evolutionary time with a trickle-charge of photosynthesis using solar energy, billions of tons of living biomass were stored in forests and other ecosystems and in vast reserves of fossil fuels. In just the last few hundred years, humans extracted exploitable energy from these living and fossilized biomass fuels to build the modern industrial-technological-informational economy, to grow our population to more than 7 billion, and to transform the biogeochemical cycles and biodiversity of the earth. This rapid discharge of the earth’s store of organic energy fuels the human domination of the biosphere, including conversion of natural habitats to agricultural fields and the resulting loss of native species, emission of carbon dioxide and the resulting climate and sea level change, and use of supplemental nuclear, hydro, wind, and solar energy sources. The laws of thermodynamics governing the trickle-charge and rapid discharge of the earth’s battery are universal and absolute; the earth is only temporarily poised a quantifiable distance from the thermodynamic equilibrium of outer space. Although this distance from equilibrium is comprised of all energy types, most critical for humans is the store of living biomass. With the rapid depletion of this chemical energy, the earth is shifting back toward the inhospitable equilibrium of outer space with fundamental ramifications for the biosphere and humanity. Because there is no substitute or replacement energy for living biomass, the remaining distance from equilibrium that will be required to support human life is unknown.
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Resources
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Climate Science Documents
