Thesis (M.A.)--Victoria University of Wellington, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (PHD)--University of Montana, 2009. / Contents viewed on April 9, 2010. Title from author supplied metadata. Includes bibliographical references.

Management prescriptions that describe desired conditions for resources and visitor experiences have become widely accepted as an important component of public land management plans. However, very little effort is spent on evaluating and learning about this part of the planning process. This research identifies and addresses the need to explore opportunities for additional guidance on the development of management prescriptions, by (1) evaluating the current perception of the purpose of management prescriptions; (2) developing criteria and other tools to guide the development of management prescriptions based on the experiences of public land management professionals; and (3) testing an alternative method for collecting visitor preference data regarding social, resource and management conditions to inform development of management prescriptions. The first two papers report the results of a visitor preference study, using the stated choice method, conducted in Acadia National Park. The purpose of the first paper is to identify visitor preferences for tradeoffs among social, resource and related management conditions of the recreation setting. The purpose of the second paper is to identify differences among visitor preferences for social, resource and management conditions in various recreation settings. By considering the integrative nature of these attributes and the relative importance to visitors across recreation settings, the definition of management prescriptions can be better informed. To further investigate the results of the stated choice method and ensure the validity of the data, a verbal protocol assessment was applied to a sample of the stated choice survey respondents. The purpose of the third paper is to reexamine the role of management prescriptions for park management planning and investigate tools for facilitating development of management prescriptions. The study included in-depth interviews, participant observation of a three-day planning workshop and a written survey. All of the participants in the various components of the study were National Park Service land management professionals. The study resulted in a list of the purpose and criteria for management prescriptions and a related menu of desired condition topics, which will be integrated into planning guidance to aid the development of unique and effective management prescriptions for national parks. / Ph. D.

This dissertation examines the environmental discourse of the USDA Forest Service, focusing on the language of ecosystem management (EM). A two pronged approach was employed: eleven interviews were conducted with agency executives (chapter two); thirty-three interviews were conducted with agency staff specialists and decision-makers, working at the agency's operational levels (chapter three and four). Differences between how agency executives view EM and how agency operators view EM were identified. Chapter two shows that agency executives generally believed that the process of EM is ingrained in the agency. Chapter three explores this assertion at the forest and district levels, and reveals conflicting stories concerning the current practice of EM. Agency operators explained EM as a process driven by ecological science, but also revealed an alternate planning process. The alternate planning process is driven by the agency's budget and strict employee roles. Through qualitative analysis of interviews with agency operators, a model of how agency operators construct agency planning was created. It illustrates the potential mismatch between planning focused on ecological science and an agency focused on budgets, cost-benefit calculations, and strict employee roles. The model also shows that agency operators described active and passive publics in their constructions of agency planning. Chapter four focuses on these constructs of the public, and shows how they are partly created by agency interpretations of the public involvement processes required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). In some cases, the agency applies a standard for public participation (substantive sieve) that requires publics to couch their concerns in scientific or legal terms. Publics that are able to navigate the substantive sieve are typically viewed as active publics, while those that cannot meet this standard are viewed as passive publics. A feedback mechanism was identified between constructs of the public and agency process; constructs of the public shape agency process and agency process shapes agency constructions of the public. The dissertation concludes by showing that agency focus on budgetary targets and the use of the substantive sieve can be understood as attempts to instill accountability into a decentralized agency with an ambiguous mission. / Ph. D.

This study examines opportunities for coordinated road management for purposes of ecosystem management. The coordination efforts in Greater Yellowstone provide a case study illustrating these opportunities. The study first reviews current literature about ecosystems, ecosystem management goals, benefits and the application of the concept to Greater Yellowstone. Issues of forest road management are also examined. The study then turns to a critique of current road management efforts in six National Forests of northwest Wyoming, southwest Montana and eastern Idaho; which are considered part of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Comparisons of road management planning and policy will be made primarily through examination of forest plans and engineering policies, and through personal communication with forest highway engineers and transportation planners. Recommendations for improving coordination of forest road management follow the critique. / Master of Urban and Regional Planning

No description available.

Nesta tese, analisamos o processo de formação da propriedade capitalista no estado do Amazonas. Para tanto, buscamos responder aos seguintes questionamentos: como estão distribuídas as terras no Estado? Como tem se constituído histórica e juridicamente a propriedade? Quais os mecanismos utilizados na apropriação privada da terra? Quais os sujeitos que rivalizam e de qual maneira ocorrem as disputas pela posse do território? A pesquisa partiu de trabalhos de campo e de levantamentos documentais, buscando garantir um compromisso com a realidade, tendo em vista que optamos pelo método materialista e seguimos com análise fundamentada em conceitos e teorias. Verificamos que a apropriação privada da terra surgiu da disputa territorial ainda nos primórdios da colonização europeia da região, caracterizada pelo genocídio de povos indígenas, e se prolongou até a década de 1980, com essa mesma característica. A apropriação privada da terra é também predominantemente realizada fora dos limites legais e não tem por prioridade a ocupação ou produção capitalista. A grilagem e o rentismo estão entre as principais características dos grandes imóveis. Outra característica é justamente a alta concentração fundiária. Essa conjuntura tem gerado importantes conflitos agrários envolvendo grileiros de terras e empresários capitalista, de um lado, e camponeses posseiros e povos indígenas, do outro, redundando em um quadro crônico de violência. / In this thesis, we analyze the process of formation of capitalist property in the State of Amazonas. For this purpose, we seek to answer the following questions: how are the lands distributed in the State? How has the property been historically and legally constituted? What are the mechanisms used in private ownership of land? What are the subjects who compete and in what way do the disputes for the possession of the territory occur? The research was based on fieldwork and documentary surveys, seeking to guarantee a commitment to reality, considering that we opted for the materialistic method, and followed with an analysis based on concepts and theories. We verified that the private appropriation of land emerged from the territorial dispute still in the early days of European colonization of the region, characterized by the genocide of indigenous peoples, and lasted until the 1980s, with the same characteristic. The private appropriation of land is also predominantly made outside the legal limits, and capitalist occupation or production is not a priority. Public land fraud and rentism are among the main characteristics of large properties. Another characteristic is precisely the high concentration of land. This situation has generated important agrarian conflicts involving land grabbers and capitalist entrepreneurs, on the one hand, and squatter peasants and indigenous peoples, on the other, resulting in a chronic situation of violence.

Societies frequently implement land use policies to regulate resource extraction or to regulate development. However, two important policy questions remain unresolved. First, how effective are land use regulations? Second, how do land use regulations affect socioeconomic conditions? Three issues complicate the evaluation of land use policies: (1) overt bias may lead to incorrect estimates of policy effects if implementation is nonrandom; (2) the policy may affect outcomes in neighboring unregulated lands; and (3) unobservable differences between regulated and unregulated lands may lead to biased assessments. Previous evaluations of land use policies fail to address these sources of bias simultaneously. In this dissertation, I develop an approach, using matching methods, which jointly accounts for these complications. I apply the approach to evaluate the effects of Costa Rica s protected areas on land use and socioeconomic outcomes between 1960 and 2000. I find that: (1) protection prevented the deforestation of only 10 percent or less of protected forests; (2) protection resulted in reforestation of only 20 percent of non-forest areas that were protected; (3) protection had little effect on land use outside protected areas, most likely because, as noted above, protected areas had only small effects on land use inside protected areas; and (4) there is little evidence that protected areas had harmful impacts on the livelihoods of local communities: on the contrary, I find that protection had small positive effects on socioeconomic outcomes. Furthermore, the methods traditionally used to conduct such evaluations are biased. In contrast to the findings above, those conventional methods overestimated the amount of avoided deforestation and erroneously implied that protection had negative impacts on the livelihoods of local communities. This dissertation contributes to policymaking by providing empirical measures of protected area effectiveness. Although annual global expenditures on protected areas are about $6.5 billion, little is known to date about the returns on these investments. This study also indicates that policymakers should give careful consideration to current proposals to compensate communities living in or around protected areas: contrary to widely held assumptions, the findings suggest that protection may not have harmful effects on socioeconomic outcomes.

abstract: The border policies of the United States and Mexico that have evolved over the previous decades have pushed illegal immigration and drug smuggling to remote and often public lands. Valuable natural resources and tourist sites suffer an inordinate level of environmental impacts as a result of activities, from new roads and trash to cut fence lines and abandoned vehicles. Public land managers struggle to characterize impacts and plan for effective landscape level rehabilitation projects that are the most cost effective and environmentally beneficial for a region given resource limitations. A decision support tool is developed to facilitate public land management: Borderlands Environmental Rehabilitation Spatial Decision Support System (BERSDSS). The utility of the system is demonstrated using a case study of the Sonoran Desert National Monument, Arizona. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Geography 2013

Orientador: Bastiaan Philip Reydon / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Economia / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-25T03:33:32Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Fernandes_VitorBukvar_M.pdf: 4539950 bytes, checksum: 62a3011b05216b8b4fd8625aa747b2ad (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014 / Resumo: Verdade repetida insistentemente, todos sabemos que a estrutura fundiária brasileira se mantém concentrada desde sua origem. Unindo a isso o quadro de caos regulatório e legislativo no tocante da terra no Brasil, este estudo se propõe a delinear um padrão histórico de regulação da apropriação territorial até 1964 e analisar o período que se segue daí até a atualidade para mostrar que este mesmo padrão se manteve em essência, além de mostrar que esta manutenção traz consigo efeitos extremamente viciosos. Partindo da característica central de manutenção da apropriação privada das terras devolutas, analisaremos no capítulo 1 como se constituiu este padrão de regulação permissivo e como ele se manteve até a metade do século XIX. Em seguida, no capítulo 2, realizaremos o mesmo tipo de análise para os anos subsequentes até os dias de hoje expondo que, apesar de mudanças em aparência, este padrão se manteve. No capítulo 3, analisaremos o caso da regulação da apropriação de terras no Pará como outra fonte de argumentos que corroboram à nossa tese. No capítulo 4, por fim, exporemos sintomas decorrentes da manutenção desta forma de regulação da ocupação territorial ¿ depois de mostrar que a estrutura fundiária brasileira sempre foi concentrada, mostraremos os principais fatores que perpetuam esta forma estrutural e fatores deletérios outros que são decorrentes desta manutenção / Abstract: It is widely known that Brazilian land structure is still very concentrated since the colonization. Bearing in mind the Brazilian land concentration and the chaotic land regulatory and legislative framework, this study pretends to outline an historical territorial appropriation pattern up to 1964 and analyze the subsequent period to show that this pattern maintained itself in essence, also showing that it brings many vicious effects. Starting from the maintenance of the private appropriation of unregistered public lands as the central characteristic, chapter 1 will analyze how this permissive regulatory pattern was constituted and maintained until the first half of the 20th century. Next, in chapter 2, we will use the same kind of analysis for the subsequent years up to the present day showing that, regardless of changes in its appearance, this pattern was maintained. In chapter 3 we will focus on the Para state case and its territorial appropriation regulations as another source of arguments corroborating for our thesis. Finally, in chapter 4, the symptoms derived from maintaining this form of regulation of territorial occupation will be exposed ¿ after showing that Brazilian land is and always was concentrated, we will highlight the main factors that caused this structural form and other negative factors that come into being through this maintenance / Mestrado / Desenvolvimento Economico, Espaço e Meio Ambiente / Mestre em Desenvolvimento Econômico