The intensification of land uses in the United States results from population growth, rapid expansion in the service sector, and residential land use growth. These trends cause diminishment of open space and increase sprawl-type land development. So-called "livability" issues are of growing importance in many metropolitan and rural areas across the country. Exasperating this transformation of land use, current demographic trends in the U.S. imply a near-future turnover of a large percentage of farmland and open space land in the form of estate transfer. Current U.S. estate tax policy could be accelerating the transfer of open spaces to developed land uses. Local zoning ordinances, as well as state and federal infrastructure subsidies are also compounding this trend. To date, no method exists which evaluates the economic feasibility of open space preservation. This thesis proposes to establish such a method. A landholder may conserve their land parcel in a non-developed use in perpetuity by placing a Conservation Easement on the property. This land value, the development rights of the land parcel, can be donated to a non-profit organization. The landowner may then deduct the development right value from their income tax as a charitable donation. This thesis compares the economic viability of a landholder that donates a Conservation Easement and invests the tax benefits, with that of a landholder that sells their land parcel to development interests. Further, this thesis explores the demographic profile for which preserving open space may be economically beneficial for the donor of a conservation easement. This thesis is the intersection of three literatures, drawing together three separate land preservation paradigms. First, the altruistic philanthropy landowners exhibit when donating development rights without economic impetus. Second, the thesis introduces the income tax benefits, and their investment potential, available in the Internal Revenue Code for charitable donations. Third, federal land preservation mandates and subsequent funding availability is examined. These tools function together to provide implications for facilitating the deterrence of sprawl-type development. Further, these tools will be compared to the current methods of land preservation, consisting of local zoning ordinances and the purchase of development rights by governmental agencies. These current policies possess serious shortcomings in ameliorating conflict between land uses, as well as diverting sub-urban development from prime farm and open space land. Conservation Easements are shown to have applications in the protection of land subject to estate turnover, control of land uses that cause nuisance externalities, and general local land policy. A spreadsheet algorithm in Microsoft Excel Solver format is included that determines the economic feasibility of performing an easement at the individual landholder level. / Master of Science

Private land conservation provides an opportunity to address problems of habitat fragmentation and biodiversity loss caused by an increase in the development and parcelization of private land. Conservation easements (CEs) are an innovative tool used by land trusts to protect significant natural qualities of private land in perpetuity, while also allowing the land to remain in private ownership. Traditionally, property represents an individualistic relationship, however, CEs redefine this relationship by seeking to maximize the overlap in private and public goods in property. In this study, I explore the relationship between the common good and private property through an analysis of landowner attitudes and interest in conveying CEs. To address my research objectives I implemented a mixed-mode survey to 664 private landowners in the Whychus Creek Watershed in Deschutes County, OR. I received 257 survey responses, yielding a response rate of 41%. The first layer of this study focuses on landowner attitudes towards CEs (Chapter 2). The results of an exploratory factor analysis suggest there are two dimensions to landowner attitudes towards CEs--internal and external dimension. I constructed logistic regression models to predict positive internal and external attitudes and found that external attitudes are primarily influenced by environmental beliefs, whereas internal attitudes are influenced by a suite of factors including financial beliefs and perceived risk to private ownership. Furthermore, landowner knowledge and awareness of CEs may play a role in attitude development. I found that as awareness increased the number of landowners perceiving low risk also increased. Additionally, I found that those who learned about CEs from a peer were more likely to have an extreme positive or negative attitude towards CEs. The second part of this study focuses on landowner interest in conveying a CE (Chapter 3). The results of a multinomial logistic regression analysis suggest that positive external and internal attitudes towards CEs provide the foundation for CE, while personal incentives and connections to the social and/or natural community serve as the motivation driving CE conveyance. Although the results of this study are only representative of landowners in the Whychus Creek Watershed I argue that some of the findings may be more broadly applicable. Contributing to our conceptual understanding of CEs, I discuss how CEs may be beneficial in reintegrating the common good into private property. Further, I highlight that landowner connections to both the social community and natural environment are important characteristics of CE conveyance as well as private land conservation in general.

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Conservation strategies frequently require prioritization of targets due to limited budgets and personnel. Prioritization involves choosing those areas that return the most conservation value for the time and money invested. Hence, the process of prioritization involves evaluating multiple conservation values and the uneven spatial distribution of those values across a landscape of concern. The goal of this study was to help conservation organizations improve decision making for implementation of prioritization-based strategies for land protection using a GIS-based, multi-criteria decision support system (GIS-MCDS). Geographic Information Systems (GIS) can assist conservation planners in quantifying the relative desirability of one area over another, therefore enabling better business and ecological decisions. GIS analyses for planning are routinely undertaken over large geographic extents such as ecoregions to identify priority areas. These analyses often summarize priority by pixel values in a raster image. Implementation of conservation strategy often takes place at the much larger parcel level. Therefore, aggregating pixel-based results by parcels is a prerequisite to implementation of a purchase or easement strategy. I developed a spatial decision support system in an attempt to quantify private land holdings in the High Knob area of Virginia for their relative conservation value, as defined by the Clinch Valley Program of The Nature Conservancy. It utilizes a proxy approach for measuring conservation values and an analytical hierarchy process to aggregate the results by privately held real estate parcels. Simple prioritizations are often based on parcel size alone, rather than consideration of the many conservation values that characterize land parcels. Though it is much quicker and easier to prioritize parcels in this manner, such simplicity risks missing important smaller areas for conservation while prioritizing larger parcels with less value. I compared this simple "bigger is better" ranking method to the GIS-based multi-criteria method developed for TNC. There was a 0.57 correlation between the ranked lists produced by the two models, suggesting that parcel size alone does partially explain the complexity modeled by the multi-criteria method. However, the more complex method did produce different top priority parcels, which could significantly change an organization's implementation strategy. I conclude that both methods have their applications, though the multi-criteria method is better for long-term implementations of strategic acquisition and easement. A secondary goal was to identify to what extent land trust organizations are prepared to implement a multi-criteria type analysis like the one considered in this study. I conducted an online survey of conservation professionals on how their organization currently uses GIS and their satisfaction with GIS analyses to meet their organizational mission. Sixty-one responses were collected and analyzed. The overwhelming majority of conservation organizations recognize the benefits that GIS bring and have already developed some level of internal expertise, though many barriers to using GIS were also identified. From these results, I conclude that most land trust conservation organizations are not currently utilizing the insights that multi-criteria GIS prioritization is capable of offering, but that their previous positive experience with GIS makes such analyses an attractive proposition for those on the cutting edge of the land conservation movement. / Master of Science

Conservation easements are among the fastest growing techniques for protecting land and open space. Conservation easements are legal agreements between a landowner and a conservation organization that limits or restricts entirely the right to develop a property in order to protect important conservation values associated with the property. At the heart of the conservation easement movement is the assumption that easements will protect ecologically important lands in perpetuity. However, there is little evidence that conservation easements can protect land permanently. Very few land trusts have experience in dealing with the myriad of challenges associated with long-term enforcement of conservation easements. This study sought to examine scenic easements acquired for the Blue Ridge Parkway in the 1930's and 40's and to develop an understanding of the challenges faced by the Parkway in attempting to enforce the terms of scenic easements drafted nearly 70 years ago. The scenic easements acquired for the Blue Ridge Parkways represent the first wide spread use of conservation easements in the country. The Parkway's early architects had few examples of easement programs to assist them in acquiring and managing these early forms of conservation easement nor did the NPS have the network of conservation organizations that exists today. This study reviews the process utilized by the Commonwealth of Virginia and the State of North Carolina to acquire scenic easements for the Blue Ridge Parkway and assesses the deeds used to convey the scenic easements from the states to the federal government. Further, this study evaluates and examines the number and types of violations of easement terms experienced by the Parkway and the various factors that may have contributed to violations of scenic easement restrictions and requests to alter/amend easements. This study also evaluates the various strategies used by the National Park Service to exchange and release scenic easements. Finally, this study concludes with a number of recommendations for improving the management of the Parkway's scenic easements and how organizations currently holding conservations can improve the stewardship of easements by incorporating adaptive management principles into their conservation easement stewardship programs. / Master of Urban and Regional Planning

Over the past several decades conservation easements have seen immense growth in their popularity. There are now over 40 million acres of easement land in the United States, up from only 1.4 million in 1998. A significant body of research exists on easements, factors that lead to their adoption, their consequences and effectiveness, and problems that arise from their use, among other topics. Our study contributes to this literature by exploring community and system-level effects on easement adoption, using Virginia as a case study, and applying a novel approach that incorporates spatial analysis and the insights of conservation professionals. The purpose of our research was to explore whether community-level factors affect easement adoption decisions, and what those factors are. Previously established variables were investigated to gauge their relationship to easement occurrence when scaled up to the community level, as well as to test our ability to make predictions about where easements should be most likely to occur. Spatial market segmentation data was also incorporated into this analysis to determine whether it could augment our understanding of community-level factors and predictive ability. Statistical models produced were reasonably predictive. However, we suspect that this was the case for different reasons at our community scale of analysis than at the individual landowner level examined in previous research. We used surveys and interviews with easement professionals to further explore additional variables that might explain adoption patterns. Results indicate the importance of system-level factors including change agents, opinion leaders, and local government and land-use planning. / Master of Science

Conservation in the nonprofit land trust community is primarily through fee-simple ownership or conservation easement with the management plan becoming more common. Data were obtained from the 2005 Land Trust Alliance National Land Trust Survey. Of 1,667 land trusts, 972 reported at least one fee-owned, and 946 reported at least one conservation easement property. The overall guiding hypothesis was that demographic variables affect the probability of having a management plan in place. Demographic variables included: 1) number of employees, 2) age of organizations, 3) size of protected areas, and 4) geographic region. In logistic regression for fee-owned properties, full-time employees increased the probability of having management plans, whereas, part-time employees decreased the probability, p=0.001 and p=0.004. For conservation easements, region was of significance. In general, logistic regression and Chi-square analysis indicated that land trusts with one or more employees have greater ability to carry out their conservation mission and that regions of the U.S. vary in likelihood of having management plans / Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management