Ashe Juniper (Juniperus ashei) is native to the Edwards Plateau in central Texas. In the past 150 years, however, this species has rapidly increased in abundance within its range. Reduced fire frequency and increased livestock grazing, are two factors attributed to the rapid rate of juniper encroachment. While the losses associated with brush encroachment are recognized, many ranchers lack the funds necessary to implement management practices to reduce juniper densities on their property. The high cost associated with clearing brush has led to the creation of cost-share programs, which help offset the expenses incurred by participating landowners. The Leon River Restoration Project (LRRP), implemented on private lands within Coryell and Hamilton Counties, Texas, is one such cost-share program. Funding for the LRRP is received through non-programmatic sources, in the form of grants, from various state and federal organizations and agencies. The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) provides a second source of funding through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP). Participants contracted through LRRP funds receive 85% cost-share benefits, up to a maximum of $15,000. Landowners participating in the LRRP under EQIP funds receive 50% cost-share incentives, up to a maximum of $250,000. The purpose of this study was to record changes that occurred on land enrolled in the LRRP, following juniper removal, and the economic benefits recognized by this work. Thirty landowners scheduled to participate in the LRRP were interviewed in 2003, prior to juniper control work. In 2006, 23 of the original 30 landowners participated in a second interview, following their completion of brush removal work. Changes attributed to juniper removal were recorded during these post-clearing interviews. Stocking rate changes were used as the basis for measuring economic benefits recognized by the clearing efforts. Changes in hunting or grazing lease rates resulting from juniper clearing were also used to monitor economic benefits of the brushwork. A second component of the study tested for differences in landowner satisfaction between LRRP participants enrolled under LRRP funds, and those contracted under EQIP funds. Importanceperformance matrixes were created to display satisfaction differences.

Cost-share programs to improve sustainable land and water use are offered from federal, state, and non-governmental entities to non-industrial private (NIP) landowners. Despite the broad attention given to the ecological benefits of these programs, far less attention has been focused on their social impacts and benefits. To achieve the desired environmental objectives laid out within these programs, natural resource agencies must work to maintain high levels of satisfaction and participation among private landowners. The purpose of the study was to examine the attitudes and motivations of participants enrolled in one of three cost-share programs in Mississippi and compare those with the views of natural resource professionals throughout the state regarding landowner attitudes and motivations. Overall, landowners had positive views of their program experiences and the views of natural resource professionals coincided largely with those of landowners.

The purpose of this study is to review existing literature of factors that influence farmers’ decision to participate in conservation programs. This study is also intended to collect county data and information on conservation programs and participation in the Kentucky River watershed region, which can be analyzed and used to draw differences in characteristics of the region that would suggest willingness to participate in a trading scheme for improvements in water quality. The results suggest that more participation in a trading scheme from some counties than others should be expected. Counties with more farms and larger farms will probably have higher rates of participation in conservation programs. The cost-share amounts being paid by current government programs must be considered as the minimum staring point to negotiate in a trading scheme. To target the impact of watersheds, such as the Kentucky River in the Mississippi system, that discharges significant amounts of pollutants into the Gulf of Mexico, policy makers and program administrators should be advising and stimulating the adoption of practices with the best abatement performance for such pollutants considering technical complementarity between practices.

Master of Science - Agricultural Education and Communication / Department of Communications and Agricultural Education / Lauri M. Baker / The equine industry is an established part of Maryland Agriculture; the most recent equine census placed 79,100 equines valued at approximately $714 million in the state, with approximately ten percent of those animals housed in Montgomery County. But, equine operators are a unique demographic in the agricultural realm. They are not managing their lands to produce food or fiber and often are employed in other professions unrelated to agriculture. Unlike other agricultural operators, they are often unaware of conservation terms or practices and programs available to help implement these practices on their land. The basic objective of this study was to explore the level of understanding equine operators in Montgomery County, Maryland have of conservation best management practices (BMPs), associated cost-share programs, industry regulations and the aspects and methods of communication that influence them in gaining awareness of and the adoption of these practices on their properties. The study applied the tenets of the decomposed theory of planned behavior (DTPB), which combines the theory of planned behavior (TPB), diffusion of innovation theory (DOI) and economic constraint theory gathered through semi-structured qualitative interviews with participants, selected using purposive and snowball sampling. Utilizing the grounded theory method to discover emerging patterns in the data resulting from these interviews aided in identifying the most effective means of educating equine operators regarding BMPs and increasing the adoption of these practices on equine properties within the County. Equine operators in the study were found to use a variety of informational sources, had a high level of adaptation of the BMPs they used and overall saw their role as land stewards as an important aspect of their environmental actions.

<p>A survey of farmers was conducted to determine the extent of cost-share and non-costshare BMP implementation and to evaluate the impact of socio-economic variables of the adoption of BMPs in Virginia's Chesapeake Bay drainage basin. Farmers in 67 counties in Virginia were randomly selected using VirGIS land use data and GRASS 4.1. All of the counties included in the study had at least 90 percent of their total land in the Chesapeake Bay drainage basin. Surveys were mailed to approximately 5,850 farm operators and 1,377 responses were returned, with approximately 1,099 estimated to farm in the Chesapeake Bay basin.</p> <p> A concern for pollution in the Chesapeake Bay was evident by farmers throughout the Bay basin, as 80 percent of the respondents indicated being concerned about water pollution in the Chesapeake Bay. However, only 33 percent believed that their farm contributed to water quality problems. The most often indicated perceived causes of pollution were runoff from urban or paved areas, industrial waste or factory discharge, sewer systems, and litter or garbage.</p> / Master of Science

Forest management practices which reduce southern pine beetle (SPB) risk benefit not only the landowners who perform them, but all those who draw benefits from southern pine forests in Virginia, especially other forest owners within the same region. One such management practice is pre-commercial thinning (PCT), which is particularly unattractive to non-industrial private forest (NIPF) landowners because of the substantial costs and delayed financial returns involved. Since the benefits to society generated by PCT are not fully realized by the individuals who might implement it, there may be a market externality in which PCT is underprovided across the landscape. The Pine Bark Beetle Prevention Program (PBBPP) has the potential to correct this externality by reimbursing a portion of the costs of PCT for landowners who qualify. However, cost share incentives have been criticized for being ineffectual on the basis that landowners substitute publicly funded reimbursement for private investment, without altering their management practices. To investigate the effect of the PBBPP cost share for PCT, a survey was sent to 1,200 NIPF landowners in seven counties across the Piedmont and Coastal Plain physiographic regions of Virginia, where southern pine is prevalent and SPB hazard is a relevant concern. To measure willingness to participate in the program, a referendum style question was used in which the offered cost share ranged from 20% to 90%. Results of discrete choice models estimated from survey data indicate that cost sharing has a significant, positive effect on willingness to participate overall, though increasing reimbursement above 60% is unlikely to affect participation. Some landowners are not responsive or are less responsive to cost sharing due to personal and property characteristics. / Master of Science

For over 30 years, federal and state governments have been engaged in a collective effort to improve the water quality and living resources in the Chesapeake Bay (CB), focusing particularly on reducing delivered nitrogen and phosphorus loads. However, achievement of water quality objectives remains elusive. In Virginia, agriculture represents the single largest source of nutrient loads to the Chesapeake Bay. Despite aggressive regulatory efforts in other nutrient source sectors, state authorities rely on educational programs and voluntary financial assistance programs to induce landowners to adopt best management practices (BMPs) that reduce agricultural nutrient loads. This study explores two economic aspects of efforts to reduce agricultural nonpoint source (NPS) pollution in the Virginia portion of the CB watershed. Firstly, current and possible future transactions costs associated with specific aspects of agricultural NPS participation in water quality trading (WQT) programs are examined in Chapter 1. A case study approach is used to consider the possible cost consequences of expanding the use of NPS credits from agricultural 'working lands' BMPs in Virginia. Findings indicate that overall transactions costs for nutrient trades involving agricultural NPS in Virginia are currently relatively low, due to the type of activities being credited: simple land conversions. Based on best available evidence, the administrative transactions costs of creating credits on agricultural 'working lands' using management and structural BMPs will be 2 to 5 times more costly on a per project basis than for credits generated from land conversions. Compliance monitoring protocols were found to be a significant driver of costs for credits generated from working agricultural lands. These results suggest an important cost/risk tradeoff between verification cost and compliance certainty for program designers to consider. The second study (Chapter 2) considers the economic cost of meeting pollution reduction targets for the Virginia portion of the CB Watershed. Existing cost models are based on simplifying behavioral assumptions about public transactions costs, conservation adoption rates, and implementation costs of agricultural BMPs. This study builds on the existing literature and uses the estimates of transactions costs from Chapter 1 together with information on producer BMP adoption rates to examine the implications of including transactions costs and differential BMP costs and adoption rates when estimating the minimum costs of achieving specified nutrient reduction goals in Virginia. The paper uses a cost-minimizing mathematical programming approach and models a number of different cost scenarios. Results indicate that inclusion of transactions costs substantially affects estimates of total costs of meeting nutrient reduction goals; on average total costs increased by 44 percent, but ranged between 19 and 81 percent depending on the scenario analyzed. Analysis of the modelled scenarios shows that those BMPs that account for the most implementation costs do not necessarily account for the most transactions costs (and vice versa). This suggests that transactions costs should be acknowledged to vary with the type of practices being implemented, rather than being approximated as either a fixed amount or a fixed proportion of implementation costs. In addition, the analysis highlights the disproportionate costs associated with achieving nutrient reductions via high-cost adopters, and suggests there may be a role for education or extension to assist landholders to lower opportunity costs of participating in conservation. / Master of Science

No description available.

<p dir="ltr">Non-native biological invasions are one of the leading concerns for global biodiversity. The establishment of invasive species reduces local biodiversity, shifts species composition, changes successional trajectories, and alters ecosystem functions. This thesis examines two aspects of invasive plants: (1) the distribution and the most important climatic and anthropogenic drivers of invasive trees across the eastern United States, and (2) an evaluation of invasive plant removal and herbaceous recovery from a government cost-share program that provides financial support for invasive plant management by private landowners.</p><p><br></p><p dir="ltr">Our first study focused on identifying the distribution of invasive trees, and the factors associated with their distribution. This is essential to predicting spread and planning subsequent management. Using USDA Forest Inventory Analysis (FIA) data and random forest modeling, we examined the distribution, and variables associated with the distribution, of invasive tree species. Invasive trees were found in 10,511 out of 299,387 FIA plots. Invasive species basal area and density (trees per ha; TPH) were highest within the central and southern Appalachian Mountains, Michigan, the Northeast, and the southern Coastal Plain of the United States. A random forest model of invasive species basal area (R²= 0.47, RMSE = 0.47) and density (R²=0.46, RMSE=0.50) vs. environmental variables found that both invasive basal area and density were most strongly associated with human footprint, followed by various climatic variables. An equivalent model of native tree basal (R²=0.53, RMSE=9.25) and TPH (R²=0.47, RMSE=8.64) found that native tree basal area and density were most strongly associated with aridity followed by various climatic variables. As human footprint increased, invasive tree basal area and density increased. These results suggest that the distribution of invasive trees is reliant on human alterations to forests.</p><p><br></p><p dir="ltr">Our second study focused on Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), a federal cost-share program that has provided $25 billion of financial assistance to farmers and non-industrial private forest owners. Few studies have examined whether this program facilitates the recovery of the herbaceous layer while decreasing the dominance of invasive plant species. We surveyed the herbaceous layer of EQIP-treated and untreated (reference) forests across three physiographic regions of Indiana. Using non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) ordination and linear mixed effects models, we evaluated the species composition, richness, diversity, evenness, floristic quality index, and herbaceous-layer cover of EQIP and reference sites. We also used linear mixed models to evaluate how EQIP site treatment affected the diversity of native plant species. Sites treated with EQIP contracts typically had significantly higher native species richness, Shannon’s diversity, and floristic quality than reference sites. There were significant separations in species composition between EQIP treated and reference forests state-wide and in the southern non-glaciated region of Indiana, although composition overlapped between EQIP and reference forests. Our study suggests that EQIP-funded treatments promote increased species richness and diversity. However, the persistent overlap in species composition we observed may signify biotic homogenization due to a long-shared history of anthropogenic disturbances between EQIP and reference sites. Therefore, active restoration of the herbaceous layer might be needed to allow a full recovery after invasive removal.</p>

<p dir="ltr">To reduce the establishment and spread of invasive plant species, the Environmental Quality Incentive Program (EQIP) was created in 1996 to provide financial and technical assistance to private landowners to aid in conservation practices and address environmental concerns. From 2014-2022, approximately $90 million dollars was obligated to the EQIP for completed contracts of over 240,000 hectares in Indiana. However, to date, there has been no examination of whether participation in conversation cost sharing programs has resulted in the recovery of native tree diversity, growth, and reproduction following the treatment of invasive plants. Furthermore, there is a gap in our understanding of the effectiveness of EQIP and its success in achieving and maintaining management goals. This thesis quantifies the composition, diversity, regeneration density and growth of tree species in response to invasive plant treatments at sites that participated in the EQIP. In particular, I investigated how the species composition of woody seedlings (stems < 2 cm dbh) and woody saplings (2 – 5 cm dbh) differed across EQIP-treated and untreated reference plots. I then examined how native species richness and diversity values differed between EQIP-treated and untreated plots. Lastly, I used dendroecological methods to determine how treatment of invasive shrubs affected overstory tree growth. Across the state, I found that native species richness of seedlings and saplings was greater in EQIP-treated plots then within reference plots. Reference plots were associated with invasive species such as <i>Lonicera maackii</i> (Amur honeysuckle), <i>Rosa multiflora</i> (multiflora rose), <i>Elaeagnus umbellata</i> (autumn olive) and <i>L. japonica</i> (Japanese honeysuckle), while EQIP-treated plots were associated with native tree species, such as <i>Carya ovata</i> (shagbark hickory),<i> Ulmus americana </i>(American elm), <i>Fraxinus americana</i> (white ash), <i>Liriodendron tulipifera</i> (yellow-poplar), <i>Quercus alba</i> (white oak), <i>Q. velutina</i> (black oak), and shrubs, such as <i>Rubus allegheniensis</i> (Allegheny blackberry) and <i>Lindera benzoin</i> (spicebush). I observed that trees generally had greater basal area increment growth following invasive shrub treatments; therefore, the reduction of invasive shrub dominance on EQIP-enrolled lands has led to a small, but significant, increase in overstory tree growth. I observed high within-group variability in growth for EQIP-treated and reference plots, likely due to differing management strategies across privately owned forests. Overall, my results demonstrate that participation in the EQIP has positively benefited species richness, and native species composition, and tree growth.</p>