The holistic, landscape-based approach of Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) in the United States emphasizes the importance of addressing three components of forest management: ecology, community, and economy. Many believe this approach represents an important and positive paradigm shift in natural resource management. In Vermont, as well as many other parts of the United States, parcelized forest ownership presents challenges to the achievement of SFM on private property. These challenges include that of applying concepts of landscape-scale management over a mosaic of small landownerships while addressing ecological, economic, and social dynamics. Many authors have suggested a need for new institutions that are better capable of addressing the integrated, boundary-crossing nature of SFM on private lands. In Vermont, partnerships involving environmental non-profit organizations are implementing innovative management strategies to promote SFM which address the challenges of parcelization. In so doing, non-profit groups are branching out from traditional roles of advocacy and public goods protection to address not only the ecological, but also economic and community aspects of forest management. Examining the strategies, organizational roles, challenges and perceived permanence of these partnerships provides a greater understanding of the nature of these new institutional arrangements for SFM. This study asks the question: How do partnerships involving environmental nonprofit organizations in Vermont attempt to achieve goals of sustainable forest management in the context of a parcelized landscape? Using a multiple case study approach, I examine three SFM-related partnerships in Vermont that involve environmental nonprofit organizations. I assess their strategies, organizational roles, challenges and perceived permanence. Results indicate that partnerships involving environmental nonprofit organizations are playing important roles in defining and institutionalizing SFM in Vermont. Partnerships use diverse strategies through which they strive to account for the three components of SFM. I find three points of entry into SFM-related issues, connected to three strategies used by partnerships to address issues of parcelization: community-based, alternative silviculture and product branding. This diversity in approach may complement the diverse nature of forest landowner’s wants and needs. Furthermore, demonstrated flexibility at the partnership and organizational levels allowed partnerships to better work toward their goals. Challenges encountered by partnerships involved both internal dynamics and external circumstances, including differential organizational capacity and economic conditions, respectively. In addition, perceived permanence of these institutional arrangements may be related to the roles that environmental nonprofit organizations play within each partnership. Findings increase our understanding of the changing roles of non-profit organizations in the forest management sector, raise key questions about the permanence of such arrangements, and provide insights into partnership practices and challenges that may be applied in other settings. The results of this study contribute to a broader analysis of national trends in SFM.

Forest resources are significant in Mississippi's ecology and economy, with 12.5 million acres of Non-Industrial Private Forest (NIPF). Frequent ownership changes with lower durations decrease the average parcel size. The study examined the trends of NIPF parcelization accommodating duration analysis and tax roll data to identify the length of ownerships in an eight-county study. Based on the results, lower duration of ownerships was associated with increased number of smaller parcels less than 11 acres and a substantial loss of large forests. The median duration of ownership was between 10 to 15 years and 59% were absentee NIPF owners. Duration analysis revealed the length of NIPF ownership was highly associated with the size of the forest, sawtimber price, an economic recession, and distance to the closest metropolitan city. Lower ownership durations and smaller parcels will limit economies of scale and alter the functionality and structure of the NIPFs in the future.

Politische und sozioökonomische Rahmenbedingungen haben entscheidenden Einfluss auf Landnutzungswandel; die relative Bedeutung dieser Faktoren untereinander ist jedoch oftmals unklar. Ziel dieser Arbeit ist es, durch die Untersuchung der Auswirkungen der politischen und sozioökonomischen Transformation auf Landnutzungswandel in Osteuropa zu einem besseren Verständnis solcher übergreifenden Einflussfaktoren beizutragen. Am Beispiel des Dreiländerecks Polen-Slowakei-Ukraine in den Karpaten wurden hierzu grenzüberschreitende Landschaftsvergleiche durchgeführt, da solche Vergleiche die Entkopplung der Faktoren allgemeiner Landnutzungstrends von Faktoren länderspezifischer Veränderungen ermöglichen. Darüber hinaus sind die Auswirkungen postsozialistischen Landschaftswandels auf die Karpaten, einem Gebiet mit einzigartigem ökologischen Wert, bisher weitestgehend unerforscht. Mit Hilfe von Landsat TM/ETM+ Satellitendaten aus dem Jahr 2000 wurden rezente Landschaftsunterschiede zwischen Ländern quantifiziert. Auf der Basis von Bildern von 1986-2000 wurde anschliessend überprüft, ob Länderunterschiede auf sozialistischen oder post-sozialistischen Landschaftswandel zurückführbar sind. Die Ergebnisse dieser Analysen zeigten weit verbreiteten Landnutzungswandel nach 1989 als Folge von sich verschlechternden wirtschaftlichen Bedingungen, geschwächten Institutionen und gesellschaftlichem Wandel. Die Länder unterschieden sich jedoch auch deutlich hinsichtlich Forstveränderungen, Brachfallung und Parzellierung von Ackerland. Diese Unterschiede lassen sich durch verschiedene Besitzverhältnisse, Bewirtschaftungsformen und Landreformen erklären. Während sich Polen und die Slowakei landschaftlich seit 1989 annähern, entfernt sich die Ukraine zunehmend. Diese Arbeit unterstreicht die Bedeutung ökonomischer und institutioneller Veränderungen für Landschaftswandel und zeigt, wie unterschiedliche Besitzstrukturen und Landreformen Landschaftswandel beeinflussen. / Broad-scale political and socio-economic conditions are powerful determinants of land use change. Yet, their relative importance is unclear. The main goal of this thesis was to increase the understanding of such broad-scale drivers of land use change by studying how Eastern Europe’s landscapes were affected by the political and socio-economic transition after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989. The border triangle of Poland, Slovakia, and Ukraine in the Carpathians was selected as a study area, because cross-border comparisons of land use change allow for decoupling overall trends in the transition period from country specific changes. Moreover, the Carpathians are of exceptional ecological value, but little is known about land use effects on these ecosystems after 1989. Post-socialist land use change was quantified based on Landsat TM/ETM+ images by (1) comparing contemporary (year 2000) landscapes among countries, and (2) using images from 1986 to 2000 to investigate whether differences originated from socialist or post-socialist land use change. Results indicated that forest change, farmland abandonment, and farmland parcelization were widespread in the transition period, likely due to worsening economic conditions, weakened institutions, and societal change. However, land use trends also differed strongly among the three countries due to dissimilar land ownership patterns, land management practices, and land reforms. Poland and Slovakia converged in the transition period in terms of land cover, while Ukraine clearly diverged. This thesis provided compelling evidence of the importance of economic and institutional change for land use change and underpinned the pivotal role of ownership patterns and land management policies. These factors were important to understand land use change in Eastern Europe, and they are likely equally important elsewhere.