The majority of the forested land in New England is owned by private landowners, a large number of whom are at or above retirement age. In the coming decades these landowners are going to be making decisions about what happens to their land once they no longer own it. Female landowners specifically play a critical role in the long-term planning and decision-making process. Women generally have a longer life expectancy than men and assess their level of confidence and financial stability in ways that differ from men. This difference in perception influences the decisions they make about their land. Despite this, little is known about decisions female landowners are making and barriers they face to formulating informed decisions that are in line with their goals. In order to understand more about female landowners’ estate planning objectives, I conducted a mixed-methods study. Through a mail survey and subsequent qualitative interviews, I found that women were more likely than men to have lower confidence confidence in moving forward with plans for the land, lower certainty that their financial resources were adequate to move forward, and less certainty when it came to future decisions about their land. However, women who were certain about their estate planning objectives were more likely than men to have a conservation-based decision. The results of this mixed-methods study are applied to peer-to-peer network events and outcomes are discussed.

Understanding family forest owners’ (FFOs’) attitudes and behaviors towards climate change will allow for more sustainable forest management practices to be implemented, helping to combat climate change and its impacts. The goals for this research are (1) to begin measuring U.S. FFO attitudes toward climate change, (2) to determine what factors impact these attitudes, and (3) to determine how they influence the FFO’s management practices using the Responsible Environmental Behavior (REB) framework (Hines et al. 1987). Chapter 1 explores the different facets of my thesis project focusing on forests and forests’ ecosystem services, forest ownership in the United States, and exploration of the REB model and serves as a more in-depth introduction section of Chapter 2. I explored past research of climate change attitude and beliefs and found age, political affiliation, education level and income of U.S. forest owners and foresters were significant factors in comparison to their climate change belief or attitude. Chapter 2 follows my research project, in which I measure the climate change attitudes of FFOs in Alabama, Oregon, and Wisconsin and their employment of climate centered forest management practices as well as the factors that influence these practices using mailed surveys. Based on the categories developed by Maibahc et al. (Maibach et al. 2009) to describe the general public’s attitudes towards climate change, I found about 16% of the FFOs in the study area were in the Alarmed segment, 16% in the Concerned, 37% in the Cautious, 2% in the Disengaged, 10% in the Doubtful, and 20% in the Dismissive. FFOs in Oregon and Wisconsin were more likely to be in a higher climate change attitude segment than those in Alabama. FFOs who had a college degree were more likely to be in a higher climate change attitude segment than those and a college degree. Climate change attitude was not a significant factor in determining if the FFO would carry out a climate centered management practice within the REB framework but rather the FFOs who indicated financial objectives were an important reason for owning their forest\land were more likely to carry out the listed management practices. These results indicate climate change belief is not necessary for an FFO to manage their land to mitigate or adapt to future climate impacts, but rather the individual objectives and values determine which management practices are utilized.