Factors Affecting Land Trust Agents' Preferences for Conservation Easements

Open space provides a range of benefits to many people of a community, beyond the benefits that accrue to private landowners. Parks and natural areas can be used for recreation; wetlands and forests supply storm-water drainage and wildlife habitat; farms and forests provide aesthetic benefits to surrounding residents. Moreover, undeveloped land can give relief from congestion. Agricultural lands are an important source of open space, but many of these lands are under great development pressure. One tool that is currently being used to aid in the preservation of open space by landowners is conservation easements. The rate of land protection by state and local land trusts has tripled since the beginning of the decade, and the West is the fastest growing region for both the number of acres under conservation easements and number of land trusts according to the Land Trust Alliance. Given the increased demand for amenities provided by private agricultural lands and the increased use of conservation easements, it is interesting to note that there is a paucity of research related to landowners’ preferences regarding conservation easements. The specific research objective of this paper is to determine important factors affecting an agricultural landowners’ potential choice regarding the placement of a parcel of land under a conservation easement. Knowing these factors could be useful to communities, public organizations and land trusts trying to provide open space to meet a growing demand for this public good. Information to construct a survey was obtained through a series of focus groups held in Wyoming and Colorado. Results from these focus groups were then used to develop twelve versions of a stated choice survey instrument. The first part of the survey included questions about the landowner’s specific community. These Likert scale questions were to designed to elicit a measurement of the respondents’ “sense of place” regarding his or her community. The second part of the survey questioned participants about their land and their land’s attributes, including what the landowner felt his land was worth, types of production and non-production activities land was used for, the types of developmental pressures being felt by the landowner, and the kinds of amenities he would like to conserve on his property. The third section of the survey included questions about the landowner’s personal knowledge of easements and two stated choice questions regarding conservation easements. These stated choice questions focused on five attributes: contract length, managerial control, wildlife habitat, access and payment. The final section of the survey asked respondents about demographic characteristics. Data were analyzed as a multinomial logit random utility model in LIMDEP. Respondents preferred an easement that was in perpetuity over an easement that was term in length. Respondents were less likely to accept an easement if public access on their property was required. As payment proportion in relation to the respondents’ perception of the value of their land went up, so did the likelihood that they would accept the easement. Landowners in Colorado were more likely to accept an easement than landowners in Wyoming. This is somewhat expected as developmental pressures in Colorado are higher than Wyoming, and thus far more easements have been transacted in Colorado than in Wyoming. Years on the land and connection to community were significant in explaining the acceptance of an easement scenario. The more connected one was to their community, the more likely they were to accept an easement. The longer a respondent had lived on their land, the more likely they were to accept an easement as well. The level of education a respondent had achieved negatively impacted easement acceptance. If an easement was already in place on a respondents’ property, the likelihood of accepting an easement scenario increased significantly.

Extended Abstract 1.Introduction Today the role and the importance of open and green spaces are significantly increasing in the environment and the quality of building complex. Therefore, open and green spaces are considered as intrinsic, parts of land use planning decision in most countries. The gardens in the city of Jahrom are the indexes of Iranian thought and creativity and also the climatic consistency. Urban garden should be planned in green lands and some particular situations such as the arid climate. It should be mentioned that urban gardens are important in these conditions. In recent years, these gardens were destructed due of different causes along with the lack of plan. Therefore, human settlements and irregular buildings were replaced by green spaces or gardens. Gradually, these gardens were subjected to destruction risk. In this field, the main study questions include: 1) What are the most important causes of land use change in the gardens of the city of Jahrom; 2) What is the role of urban management in the land use change of gardens? 2. Theoretical Framework In urban management of all organizations, organizations and individuals are said to affect the process of city management either formally or informally. One of the most important factors contributing to the preservation of green space (gardens) and the prevention of any changes in the region is how to manage these experiences. The purpose of urban land use change is to change the plans approved by the city, including the plans within the framework of the comprehensive plan and the city services. The discovery and identification of changes in urban land use planning is one of the most important issues and requirements of urban management. In this sense, the issues of regulation and urban planning, organization and social justice in terms of equality and inequality in the distribution and value-added taxes in the city are important. The awareness of this clash of economic interests as opposed to natural resources makes reviewing and modifying the content and the enforcement of laws inevitable. In legal terminology, the change of application is defined as having permission to use the land in a way different from what is predicted in the approved city plans. The change of application is due to the request of the owner, municipal declaration, and the approval of article 5 of the Supreme Council of Architecture and Urban Planning Commission. In this situation, ownership and domination are outstanding. But sometimes the change is done without informing the owner. 3. Methodology The method used in the study is descriptive–analytical; it is of applied-developmental approach. This study has tried to investigate the effective cause of land use change in the gardens of the city of Jahrom by emphasizing the role of urban management. In this field, needed data has been collected through library data and survey studies (questionnaire and observation). Excel and GIS software have been used to analyze the collected data through the questionnaire. The population of this study consist of studying garden land use change files for purposes of observing legal framework in Article 5 commission in the municipality of Jahrom. The numbers of 36 plots of gardens have been investigated that have changed land use during 1996 -2010 (by Article 5 commission and field yield) It should be mentioned that during these years, all of changed land use gardens were 21 gardens in Article 5 commission of municipality of Jahrom and 15 gardens changed land use by field yield operations and interview with yield owner. These gardens have changed land use informally and in all owner agreement with municipality. 4. Results& Discussion The effective factors in the land use change of gardens in the city of Jahrom can be divided into two sets of general and special factors: 1. General factors These factors include all of gardens and are not just for a special part of gardens. 2. Special factors The effective factors in the land use change of gardens in the city of Jahrom and their change rates during years of 1996-2010 indicate that 190 hectares of these gardens have changed their land use to other urban land use during these years. About 5 hectares of these gardens have been lost due to the economic factors (mainly the land and house added value). The factors in question include 26.84% all land use changes of gardens during this statistical period. Therefore, it is safe to say that economic factors (mainly land and house added value) are considered the most important factors in the land use change of gardens in the city of Jahrom. 5. Conclusionsand Suggestions The findings of the study indicate that effective factors in the land use change of gardens in the city of Jahrom are of two kinds: general and special. During the years of 1996-2010, about 190 hectares of gardens changed their land use to other urban land use. Economic factors are considered the most important causes of the land use change of gardens in the city of Jahrom. Mostly the land use change of gardens and green spaces are related to the residential use (88.9%). It is safe to conslude that the regulations of Article 5 Commission and the agreement of owner and municipality in the domain of the land use changes of green spaces have resulted in the residential land use significantly. Therefore, the performance of the municipality of Jahrom with respect to the Article 5 Commission has not been successful in preserving green space (gardens). Finally, to avoid this change of use, it is proposed to use barren lands within the city for the urban infrastructure development to maintain gardens in line with sustainable development.

The relationships between people and the environment are abstract. These relationships are often transformed to explain people's behavioral patterns responding to the issues of environmental management in their local communities. Place (or the environment) is recognized as a space shaped by the interactive experiences through individual, collective, and socio-cultural processes at a given area. In the meanwhile, the theoretical concepts of 'sense of place', 'place attachment', and 'community attachment' have developed to describe such experiences. However, those concepts in some way look similar and have not been well defined within the arena of social research. It, thus, reveals that their contexts and applications in the different dimensions of research become ambiguous. Therefore, this paper reviewed a significant amount of the literature related to the concepts of 'sense of place', 'place attachment', and 'community attachment', as well as further tried to clarify the similarity and distinction among them through a better understanding on their theoretical backgrounds, definitions, research design, and implications. And, some suggestions to the future applications were provided. In summary, this paper concluded that the concept of 'sense of place' was often applied in describing the phenomena about the relationships between people and the environment, and therefore its research design was focused more on qualitative than quantitative. In turn, 'place attachment' and 'community attachment' were mostly used in the empirical research for a concrete and quantitative result. Moreover, an obvious distinction was found between the contexts of 'place attachment' and 'community attachment'. That is, 'place attachment' was emphasized on two dimensions of the environment (natural and social), and 'community attachment' was taken only one dimension-'social environment'-into its account for addressing the relationships between people and the environment.

Adoption of conservation easements among agricultural landowners in Colorado and Wyoming: The role of economic dependence and sense of place

This study aims : (1) to analyze the status of coastal ecosystems, (2) to analyze factors that affect the quality of coastal ecosystems, and (3) to prepare the direction on spatial planning in coastal areas of Ambon Bay Area. The analytical method used in this study is the analysis of ecosystem status, principal components analysis, analysis of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and analysis of dynamic systems. The results showed that the condition of ecosystem status damaged in 2008, whereby, the status of mangrove ecosystems is moderate with a density of 1100 trees/ha, the status of seagrass ecosystems damaged by percentage cover of 38,76%, and the status of coral reef ecosystems are damaged by the percentage of live coral is 42,27%. Ecosystem conditions in Ambon Bay Area is affected by land use on land, namely forest area and population. Refferral of land use planning in Ambon Bay Areas wich recommended in this study for a period of 20 years of protected areas and cultivated areas. Protected areas is aimed at 9.480,70 ha or 41,21% of land area, while the allocation of space for the cultivation area is 10.416,30 ha (58,79% of land area). To reduce the pollutant into the waters, planned buffer zones (coastal and riverine border for 11,69% of land area), which serves to absorb pollutants and protect the inland waters of the tidal influence, while still controlling the waste coming into water By using dynamic systems analysis, created the scenario of land use planning in Ambon Bay Area that integrates land and wet land. The scenario used in this study is the optimistic, pessimistic and moderate scenarios. The variable that is used to determine of policy scenarios spatial planning based on the rate of population growth is 2,5% per annum, while variable forest area of at least 30% of the area. Of the three scenarios, the scenario chosen for the land use planning policy in Ambon Bay Areas in the future is to use the moderate scenario. The simulation results moderate scenario, the status of coastal ecosystems is improved from the criteria of the coastal ecosystem damaged by coastal ecosystems index 44,44% in 2008 turned into good condition with the index of coastal ecosystems 88,89% in 2029

The use of tax incentives to encourage private landowners to donate conservation easements has become increasingly popular as policy makers search for ways to combat the growing problem of urban sprawl. The tax incentives have worked remarkably well to encourage private landowners who have both the will and the means to shoulder a significant percentage of the economic cost of protecting their land through the donation of conservation easements. However, the success of the tax incentive program should not blind its proponents to its inevitable inefficiencies and limitations. Continually increasing tax incentives in an effort to make them attractive to a broader class of landowners - including, in particular, so-called land rich, cash, poor landowners - could have unintended consequences. Thus far, the land trust community has been able to recognize and respond to the challenges presented by the acquisition and long-term stewardship of conservation easements. However, the capacity of land trusts (and the often less well-equipped government agencies) to respond to such challenges is not unlimited. Some easement holders could be overwhelmed if Congress and the states adopt policies that result in a sudden surge in easement donations. Moreover, exploitation and abuse of the tax incentives by profit motivated donors could imperil the very existence of the tax incentive program and call into question both the credibility of the land trust community and the use of conservation easements as a private land protection tool. This article undertakes a much-needed critical analysis of the tax incentives designed to encourage conservation easement donations and proposals to increase those incentives. This article ultimately concludes that a responsible approach to increasing the tax incentives is called for: Congress should increase the incentives only if some assurance can be had that the increase will be efficient, that land trusts and government agencies have the expertise and resources to appropriately screen and steward the anticipated additional easements, and that the increase will not encourage exploitation and abuse.

A significant issue affecting land use planning in sub-Saharan Africa is inconsistent and conflicting planning legislation. As a result, Ghana passed the Land Use and Spatial Planning Act, Act 925 of 2016, to address the nation's land use and spatial planning issues. Using the case study methodology, the study assesses the Act 925 implementation status, benefits, and challenges in the Upper West Region of Ghana between October 2016 and April 2018. Nine key informants were interviewed between April and June 2018 in the land use planning sector. The primary and secondary data analysis employed content analysis and thematic analysis, respectively. It emerged that besides the official change in the Act and the name of the department responsible for land use planning, there has not been any significant change in the pace, approach, logistics, attitude, and skills of land use planning. The Spatial Planning Committee (SPC) at the Metropolitan, Municipality, and District Assemblies (MMDA) level was yet to be inaugurated. Flouting of building regulations persists. Availability and access to resources; and location of departments and agencies involved in land use planning in different ministries were a challenge to the implementation of the Act. The Land Use and Spatial Planning Authority should assert itself and be adequately capacitated in terms of logistics and requisite personnel to implement the Act effectively. The implementation of physical planning standards and practices should be included as part of the District Assembly Performance Assessment Tool (DPACT) of MMDAs. Keywords: Land Use Planning, Physical Planning, Planning Legislation, Land Use and Spatial Planning Act, Act 925

The title of this research is the Evaluation of Land Capability in Tamban Sub-District, Barito Kuala District. The purpose of this research is to find out the level of land capability in Tamban Sub-District Barito Kuala District. The population and sample of this research is equal which is land unit in Tamban Sub-District, Barito Kuala District with the total of sample of 22 land units. Land units are getting from overlay landform maps, soil type maps, the slope maps, and land use which obtain from satellite imagery and topography map. The result of this research shows for the matching method of the land in Tamban Sub-District, Barito Kuala District has two land capability classification that is IV Class and V Class. IV Class with the limiting factors are the erosion and drainage and V Class with the limiting factors are the erosion, drainage and permeability. The LCLP (Land Classification and Land Use Planning) Software in Tamban Sub-District Barito Kuala District has two land capability class which are IV Class with the limiting factors is drainage and V Class with the limiting factors is permeability. Keywords: Land Evaluation, land capability classification, and land capability class.

AMERICANS concerned with environmental conservation have become deeply frustrated by the failure of governmental landuse-planning programs to protect cherished places from urbanization. Citizens are increasingly establishing private, nonprofit conservation organizations known as land trusts to protect their homelands from incompatible forms of development (Emory 1985; Wright 1992). Land-trust members employ the politics of the possible to conserve the best of what remains of local landscapes rather than opposing all growth and change. This article briefly describes the origin, diffusion, and methods of land trusts in the United States, and then examines land-trust activities in adjoining but culturally dissimilar Colorado and Utah. The origins of cultural attitudes regarding the highest and best use of land are analyzed to explain the disparity in the number of land trusts and their success in these two distinct states. The broad implications of these findings are discussed. LAND TRUSTS Local and regional land trusts use the same voluntary, negotiated, compensating techniques as do national organizations such as The Nature Conservancy, the Trust for Public Land, and the American Farmland Trust. Private-sector landscape-protection techniques include conservation easements, or tax-deductible gifts of development rights, purchase of development rights, land trades, cluster development designs, and direct purchases (Brenneman 1967; Hoose 1980; Montana Land Reliance and Land Trust Exchange 1982; Diehl and Barrett 1988; American Farmland Trust 1990; Daniels 1991). Land trusts receive tax-exempt status from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service and operate as charitable entities. This legal standing allows the value of gifts of land and conservation easements to be claimed by the grantor as deductions against income taxes, estate taxes, and capital-gains taxes (Small 1989). Land trusts purchase properties only as their budgets allow. The 889 local and regional land trusts in the United States have used these techniques to protect more than 2.7 million acres of private land from subdivision and development (Land Trust Alliance 1991; Barton 1992). Trusts hold conservation easement on 450,000 acres and own 440,000 acres. Another 1.8 million acres have been either acquired and transferred to other groups or secured by restrictive covenants. Land trusts are concerned with a great diversity of landscape elements, but about 70 percent of trusts focus on wildlife habitats, scenic open space, recreational areas, and agricultural land. Membership exceeds 775,000, an increase of 300,000 since 1984 (Land Trust Alliance 1991; Barton 1992). Despite the fiscal and technical rigors of establishing and operating land-conservation programs, trusts continue to grow in number (Brenneman and Bates 1984; Wright 1992). HISTORY AND DIFFUSION OF LAND TRUSTS Approximately one-half of the land trusts in the United States have incorporated in the last decade, and new groups are forming at the rate of more than one a week. However, the land-trust concept has existed for more than a century. Land trusts began in Boston in 1891 with the formation of the Trustees of Public Reservations. By 1950, New England still contained most of the 53 trusts in the United States; fifteen years later, however, there were more than 126 groups in 26 states, mostly in the Northeast and Middle Atlantic regions. The first Earth Day, in 1970, further raised environmental awareness. Land trusts subsequently diffused widely; by 1975 they totaled 308 (Abbott 1982). In 1981 a national organization, the Land Trust Alliance (then known as the Land Trust Exchange), was formed to attend to the interest of trusts. The alliance greatly increased communication among groups, served as a catalyst for innovations in techniques, improved the training of members, and facilitated creation of new trusts (Montana Land Reliance and Land Trust Exchange 1982; Brenneman and Bates 1984; Diehl and Barrett 1988; Stokes, Watson, and others 1989). …

Native ecosystem and biodiversity loss from land use conversion into human-modified landscapes are evident in the United States and globally. In addition to public land conservation, there is an increase in private land conservation through conservation easements (CEs) across exurban landscapes. Not every CE was established strictly for biodiversity protection and permitted land uses can increase human modification. No research of which we are aware has examined the actual tax assessor’s land use designations (LUDs) through time. We constructed granular CE datasets (GCED) of CEs and their parcels’ tax assessment LUDs for 1997–2008/2009, based on original data from 12 counties in six US states. Using the GCED, we examined patterns in the LUDs, with implications for land uses that could impact CE biological outcomes. We show that LUDs on exurban private conservation lands were predominately residential and agricultural, with increased residential over time. Critically, the LUDs lack a biological conservation exempt designation/category. There is no consistent trend in association between the primary CE reason and its parcel’s LUD, suggesting that they coincide in some circumstances but in others, the CE may be a response to contravene the LUD. The majority of the first CE reasons are focused on open space preservation, except in some counties where agricultural land uses and agricultural CEs are associated. The economically and human-focused LUD is one of many social factors that should be considered in a classification system for private land conservation and CEs more specifically. These results prompt the land conservation, conservation biology, and environmental planning communities to explore assessed land uses’ impact on biodiversity conservation objectives.

Cultural heritage conservation easements: Heritage protection with property law tools

In order to make the phenomenological concept sense of place (SoP) pragmatic in design and planning, this research investigates the SoP indicators concerning spatial scales of the physical environment. Seven indicators are extracted from the literature, namely ‘place identity’, ‘place dependence’, ‘nature bonding’, ‘social bonding’, ‘sense of belonging’, ‘familiarity’ and ‘social interaction’. In this paper, their relevance was discussed against ‘place attachment’ which is used interchangeably with SoP in the literature. ‘Place attachment’ and the seven indicators were scored through interviews with residents in general and at the the building, street and neighbourhood scales, in six housing developments selected from Ankara, Turkey. The residents rated their experiences regarding a set of statements for each indicator using the seven-point Likert scale. The data sets then were validated statistically. The correlations between each indicator and ‘place attachment’ in general and at the three scales were identified. The results showed that ‘place identity’ and ‘place dependence’ were the most relevant indicators to SoP, at the street and neighbourhood scales in particular. The second most relevant indicators were ‘sense of belonging’ and ‘social bonding’ at the building and street scales and ‘social interaction’ at the street scale. The research suggests that these five indicators could be employed to evaluate SoP at all scales or guide place-making at a particular spatial scale in planning and design.

Abstract: Land trusts, partnered with government agencies or acting alone, are working to conserve habitat, open space, and working landscapes on private land. Spending both public and private funds, such institutions frequently acquire less than full title by purchasing or accepting donations of conservation easements. These title and organizational arrangements are evolving so fast that it is difficult to assess their conservation accomplishments and long‐term viability. To understand the contribution of these arrangements to the preservation and restoration of biodiversity, conservation biologists need to identify the biological resources likely to be conserved and those likely to be left unprotected through easements held by land trusts. We describe land trusts and conservation easements and why they are currently an attractive approach to land protection. Our review of the literature showed that little information is available on (1) the resulting pattern of protected lands and resources being conserved, (2) the emerging institutions that hold conservation easements and the landowners they work with, and (3) the distribution of costs and benefits of land trusts and easements to communities and the general public. The prescriptive literature on how to establish land trusts and negotiate easements is extensive. However, easily available information on protected resources is too aggregated to determine what is actually being conserved, and more detailed data is widely scattered and hence difficult to synthesize. The social science literature provides some insight into the motives of landowners who participate but offers little about the variety of institutions or which type of institution works best in particular ecological and political settings. Equally undeveloped is our understanding of the inherent tension between the public and private benefits of this widely used incentive‐based conservation strategy. Interdisciplinary research is needed to determine the ecological and social consequences of acquiring partial interest in private land for conservation purposes.

Problem: Land trusts are important influences on land conservation and providers of protected open space in the United States, having fostered the conservation of millions acres of land. These conserved lands provide public benefits ranging from clean water to scenic views. What policy changes might help land trusts provide the equally important, but more challenging, public benefits of broad and inclusive public access? Purpose: I explore how equitable land trusts provide access to their properties and recommend what planners and others can do to encourage public access to properties protected by land trusts. Methods: I conducted a national survey of land trusts in the United States, gathering data on their characteristics and their approaches to public access. I use descriptive statistics to document and explain the extent to which they allow public access to the properties they own and manage. Results and conclusions: The majority of land trusts (78%) provide public access to some or all of their properties. However, public access is not the top priority for most land trusts. Most acreage under conservation easement does not allow public access, and even on lands owned by trusts, only modest action has been taken to promote public access. In addition, only a small share of land trusts work in urban areas or focus on acquiring land near population centers, where demand for public access is likely to be greatest. These findings provide a starting point for a broader discussion of how to provide equitable public access to conserved land. Takeaway for practice: Land trusts should continue to conserve land for ecological protection, but should also emphasize land conservation in urban areas and for public access and recreation, which were goals of public programs in the 1960s and 1970s. A renewed emphasis on public access could help build public support for land trusts' work and broaden their constituencies, which many of their representatives have expressed desires to do. Research support: None.

This paper proposes a combined model for landslide susceptibility, hazard and risk assessment based on a spatial prediction method and the fuzzy sets theory using geographical information systems (GIS). To evaluate landslide susceptibility and hazard in the study area in the northwest of Iran, the first step was the construction of a database, which includes three different data groups namely conditioning and triggering factors and the landslide inventory data. A landslide susceptibility model was constructed by using favorability function method and conditioning data. The selected landslides were of moderate to high intensity, which had occurred or reactivated at least once over the last 55 years. Landslide susceptibility map (LSM) was transformed into landslide hazard map (LHM) by using the regional seismic and precipitation data. Desirably, the accuracy of susceptibility and hazard models were determined 84.9% and 84.8%, respectively, by using the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve method. Layers of the landslide hazard potential (LHP) and resource damage potential (RDP) were integrated based on the fuzzy algebraic product operator in order to determine the risk level due to landslides. Lastly yet most importantly, the results of the study were integrated in the risk prevention and land use planning.