Individual Landowners Research Articles

Granice władztwa planistycznego przy uchwalaniu miejscowego planu zagospodarowania przestrzennego

The considerations of the article focus on the planning power exercised by a municipality as a unilateral and authoritative determination of the purpose of the land and its development. The municipality in the capacity of a planning au­thority cannot assume an absolute and unlimited power and must act within the limits determined by applicable and binding laws. Hence, in the implementation of its land development tasks, the municipality (or local authorities) are bound by the provisions of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland and other relevant laws that govern the planning authority granted to municipalities. Exceeding the limits of this planning power will occur when planning solutions prove to be arbitrary and lack substantive justification. Defective legal solutions include not only solutions that violate the law, but also those that result from a potential abuse of the competence of the municipality. Determining the land purpose and the manner of its management must reflect a reasonable and real need for the solution adopted. When the latter is detached from the legal and factual status of the land in question, a violation of planning power arises. When a municipality adopts a local plan which introduces certain restrictions in the use of the property right that is protected in the Constitution, it is obliged to apply legal measures that will be the least onerous for individual entities and which will remain in a rational proportion to the intended purposes. However, certain situations that will lead to the conflict of interests are unavoidable. Settling these conflicts in the process of law-making requires, each time, the weighing off the interests of individual property owners and the public interest of the whole local community. Individual owners may sue the municipal planning authority on the grounds of the abuse of its planning power when adopting a local land management plan and such legal actions may be effective.

Socioeconomic and environmental predictors of estuarine shoreline hard armoring

Rising sea levels and growing coastal populations are intensifying interactions at the land-sea interface. To stabilize upland and protect human developments from coastal hazards, landowners commonly emplace hard armoring structures, such as bulkheads and revetments, along estuarine shorelines. The ecological and economic consequences of shoreline armoring have garnered significant attention; however, few studies have examined the extent of hard armoring or identified drivers of hard armoring patterns at the individual landowner level across large geographical areas. This study addresses this knowledge gap by using a fine-scale census of hard armoring along the entire Georgia U.S. estuarine coastline. We develop a parsimonious statistical model that accurately predicts the probability of armoring emplacement at the parcel level based on a set of environmental and socioeconomic variables. Several interacting influences contribute to patterns of shoreline armoring; in particular, shoreline slope and the presence of armoring on a neighboring parcel are strong predictors of armoring. The model also suggests that continued sea level rise and coastal population growth could trigger future increases in armoring, emphasizing the importance of considering dynamic patterns of armoring when evaluating the potential effects of sea level rise. For example, evolving distributions of armoring should be considered in predictions of future salt marsh migration. The modeling approach developed in this study is adaptable to assessing patterns of hard armoring in other regions. With improved understanding of hard armoring distributions, sea level rise response plans can be fully informed to design more efficient scenarios for both urban development and coastal ecosystems.

An integrated model of real estate market responses to coastal flooding

AbstractUnderstanding and improving how humans adapt to climate change are priorities in our research community, and coastal settlements are good places to study adaptation. Severe storm events and sea‐level rise are threatening coastal communities with increasing levels of flood damage. Because ownership of coastal assets is distributed among many private and public actors, both individual property owners and public officials must take adaptive actions. This paper introduces an integrated agent‐based and hedonic pricing modeling system to simulate coastal real estate market performance under non‐equilibrium conditions that reflect the effects of storm events. The modeling system, which is used for policy analysis, is calibrated to conditions in two towns in Monmouth County, New Jersey, USA, which were badly damaged by Hurricane Sandy in 2012. The key findings are that (a) coastal real estate markets capitalize flood risk into property values but this discount diminishes rapidly as time passes between storm events, and (b) there is a distinct equity versus efficiency tradeoff in designing public policies to reduce the cost to society of coastal flooding. Stringent regulation of building practices reduces flood damage but drives away poorer home buyers and owners, whereas informational and incentive‐based policies are fairer but less effective. Hands‐off, market‐based retreat from risky areas is socially costly but allows less wealthy people to remain at the shore, albeit in vulnerable situations. Managed retreat should emphasize improved recreational access to coastal amenities while discouraging people from living there.

Are we ready for bushfire? Perceptions of residents, landowners and fire authorities on Lower Eyre Peninsula, South Australia

Housing developments on the peri-urban fringe of Australian towns and cities create complexities for bushfire management due to the intermingling of natural, rural and urban spaces. To address the risk of bushfire, policies and practices have promoted and encouraged landowner responsibility for bushfire mitigation actions and behaviours. Using a postal survey, interviews and focus groups, we examine perceptions and actions regarding bushfire preparedness from the viewpoints of individual residents, landowners, and the local fire and environmental authorities on the Lower Eyre Peninsula of South Australia. Respondents living on larger sized allotments were more likely to perceive that their property was vulnerable to bushfire than those living on residential-sized allotments. Larger holdings tend to have more fire-susceptible vegetation than the smaller properties located in fringe suburbs, which seems to confer to those latter residents a sense of greater safety from bushfires. On the other hand, residents on larger blocks reported higher levels of bushfire management knowledge and expressed stronger connections to the place where they live, which influenced their willingness to work to mitigate bushfire risk. Importantly, there is a disconnection between such individual landholder preparedness for bushfire and that of the broader community. Individual actions often do not translate into collective responses, suggesting that a greater sense of shared responsibility will need to develop to enable effective mitigation of regional bushfire risk at a regional scale.

From Farms to Forests: Landscape Carbon Balance after 50 Years of Afforestation, Harvesting, and Prescribed Fire

Establishing reliable carbon baselines for landowners desiring to sustain carbon sequestration and identify opportunities to mitigate land management impacts on carbon balance is important; however, national and regional assessments are not designed to support individual landowners. Such baselines become increasingly valuable when landowners convert land use, change management, or when disturbance occurs. We used forest inventories to quantify carbon stocks, estimate annual carbon fluxes, and determine net biome production (NBP) over a 50-year period coinciding with a massive afforestation effort across ~80,000 ha of land in the South Carolina Coastal Plain. Forested land increased from 48,714 ha to 73,824 ha between 1951 and 2001. Total forest biomass increased from 1.73–3.03 Gg to 17.8–18.3 Gg, corresponding to biomass density increases from 35.6–62.2 Mg ha−1 to 231.4–240.0 Mg ha−1. Harvesting removed 1340.3 Gg C between 1955 and 2001, but annual removals were variable. Fire consumed 527.1 Gg C between 1952 and 2001. Carbon exported by streams was <0.5% of total export. Carbon from roots and other harvested material that remained in-use or in landfills comprised 49.3% of total harvested carbon. Mineral soil carbon accounted for 41.6 to 50% of 2001 carbon stocks when considering depths of 1.0 or 1.5 m, respectively, and was disproportionately concentrated in wetlands. Moreover, we identified a soil carbon deficit of 19–20 Mg C ha−1, suggesting opportunities for future soil carbon sequestration in post-agricultural soils. Our results provide a robust baseline for this site that can be used to understand how land conversion, forest management, and disturbance impacts carbon balance of this landscape and highlight the value of these baseline data for other sites. Our work also identifies the need to manage forests for multiple purposes, especially promotion of soil carbon accumulation in low-density pine savannas that are managed for red-cockaded woodpeckers and therefore demand low aboveground carbon stocks.

Pathways and Associations between Women's Land Ownership and Child Food and Nutrition Security in Pakistan.

Women’s land ownership plays a noteworthy role in improving various development indicators, including her own wellbeing and children’s food and nutrition security. However, the literature linking women’s access to land rights to the nutritional security of children in Pakistan is limited, even though it is a country facing enormous challenges of childhood malnutrition and gender discrimination. This paper contributes to the existing literature on the benefits of empowering women by studying the association and pathways between women’s land rights and child nutrition, using the 2012–2013 Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey. The ordinary least squares (OLS) regression results indicate that women’s individual land ownership and women’s autonomy in large-scale family purchases have a positive impact on children’s food and nutrition security (FNS). The results of quantile regression (QR) show that these effects are more pronounced in cases of children with severe stunted growth. In addition, a structural equation model shows that the positive relationship between women’s land ownership and child nutrition is partially mediated by women’s increased decision-making power in large-scale household purchases. Our research concludes that ensuring women’s land rights can improve women’s autonomy, which can be an effective policy tool that not only improves women’s welfare but also improves their children’s nutritional security.

¿Derecho a la vivienda o la propiedad privada? De la política pública a la informalidad urbana en el Área Metropolitana de Lima (1996-2015)

As a consequence of the massive titling policy implemented by the Peruvian government from 1996, thousands of citizens have become individual landowners; but this legal ownership has not improved the minimum habitability in urban settlements. We present a case study on the neighborhoods resulting from this mode of land production in the Metropolitan Area of Lima, proving that social organization is the one actually in charge of achieving urban consolidation, replacing the role of the State. It is concluded that this policy has induced in social organizations, the valuation of the private good over the collective struggle for the construction of the urban habitat, which is not only blocked, but also stopped. This situation is constantly reinforced by state institutions and the effects of economic restructuring.

The Impact of Colonial Land Tenure Policies on the Gusii People in Kenya

Different scholars have looked at the general economic impacts of the land reforms and legal implications at national level. However, a few studies have been done on economic history in Gusiiland. This study aimed at analyzing the impact of the colonial land tenure reforms on the Abagusii customary land tenure practices in Gusii, Kenya. This study used the articulation of modes of production theory to analyze the effects of land reforms on the Abagusii community from 1895 to 1963. Descriptive Survey Design was used to guide the study.Purposive and snowball sampling methods was instrumental in selected the respondents with a sample size of 61 informants. The primary sources of data were obtained from the archives, field interviews, observation and focus group discussions while secondary data was obtained from written sources like books, Journals, magazines, periodicals, Newspaper Articles, unpublished theses, seminar papers, and electronically stored information on the internet. Logical historical method was employed in the actual process of analyzing and interpreting the data gathered.The study established that land consolidation and the issuance of individual land owners with title deeds has increased land conflicts, land titling and issuance of individual titles has increased land speculation, and land tenure reforms have failed to solve land problems or improve the agricultural sector, as well as, failing to change the African mind set or behavior of the smallholder farmers in Gusii, Kenya.

Designing Effective Incentives to Reverse Coastal Habitat Degradation along Residential Shorelines

Nature-based strategies for erosion control and coastal protection, such as “living shorelines”, are rapidly gaining traction among conservation scientists and practitioners. Living shorelines are often described as environmentally preferable alternatives to traditional shoreline armoring, which degrades natural coastal habitats and contributes to biodiversity loss in coastal ecosystems. However, a transition away from traditional armoring along many residential coastlines has been slow. We studied the attitudes, beliefs, and decisions of waterfront homeowners with natural vs. armored shorelines with a focus on identifying effective incentives for implementing living shorelines and reversing coastal habitat loss. We show that while only 18% of homeowners with vertical walls would willingly transition to a living shoreline, a modest economic incentive during a key window of opportunity could potentially persuade approximately 40% to reconsider. Our study demonstrates the critical importance of understanding the social, economic, and environmental influences on individual landowner decisions to develop effective strategies for coastal habitat conservation and restoration along private shorelines.

Ostrom, Floods and Mismatched Property Rights

How societies can cope with flood risk along coasts and riverbanks is a critical theoretical and empirical problem – particularly in the wake of anthropogenic climate change and the increased severity of floods. An example of this challenge is the growing costs of publicly-funded flood defense in Britain and popular outcries during the regular occasions that the British government fails to protect property and land during heavy rains. Traditional approaches to institutional analysis suggest that flood management is either a public good that only the government is competent to provide or a private good to which individual landowners are ultimately responsible for supplying. We argue that an important cause of failure in flood management is mismatched property rights. This is where the scale of natural events and resources fail to align with the scale of human activities, responsibility and ownership. Moreover, the spatial dimensions of floods mean that their management is often appropriately conceptualized as a common pool resource problem. As a result, commons institutions as conceptualized and observed by Elinor Ostrom are likely to be major contributors to effective flood management. What governance process should decide the size and scope of these institutions? We argue that bottom-up responses to problems of mismatched property rights are facilitated within larger societies that are characterized by market processes. Moreover, the wider presence of price signals delivers to local communities essential knowledge about the cost of maintaining private property and the relative scarcity of the communal goods. We discuss how our theoretical positions align with experience in Britain and what the implications of our theoretical approach are for facilitating the development of better institutions.

Arable and forest land user rent in a peri-urban district, Ghana

Land-use policies meant to mitigate deforestation activities in Ghana will have to consider the heterogeneity of the drivers of arable and forest land degradation. This would help avoid the one-size fits all approach to solving this problem. The urgency for this realisation is premised on the recent increasing monetary incentive to convert arable and forest land to other land uses in peri-urban Ghana. This study hypothesised that there is no significant relationship between land rent and the conversion probability from arable and forest land to other land uses such as commercial, industrial and residential land uses in Bosomtwe, a peri-urban district in the Ashanti region of Ghana. Four-hundred and one usufruct or land-owning households and individual landowners participated through a three-stage sampling procedure. The results indicated a significant relationship between higher land rent and conversion probability from arable land to other land uses such as commercial, industrial and residential land uses. Specifically, receiving land rent above GH¢400 (OR = 1.979) predicted the outcome variable in all three models. Moreover, being a female (OR = 0.612), ageing: 56 and 65 (OR = 2.158) and 76 and above (OR = 11.781), traders/food vendors (OR = 0.423) and widows (OR = 2.050) had some odds of predicting the outcome variable. The study recommends a reformation of government land use conversion policies and decisions in collaboration with landowners, to include parameters which assess the effect and benefits of land conversion decisions on biodiversity before leasing out land rights.

Rhetoric, risk, and hydraulic fracturing

Claims for America's potential for energy independence are substantiated largely thanks to advancements in an extraction process known as hydraulic fracturing or "fracking." This article focuses on the negotiations among individual landowners and oil and gas companies as they enter into leasing agreements to permit fracking. The author draws on his own experiences as a landowner in the Marcellus and Utica shale region. Of primary concern is how landowners construct their own understanding of risk amidst a network of local, regional, and global actors. Landowner and oil and gas company relationships are analyzed using theories of rhetoric and risk communication.

La colonisation valaque sur les versants nord des Carpates pendant le Petit Âge Glaciaire (aux XVe et XVIe siècles)

Osadnictwo wołoskie na północnych stokach Karpatów podczas małej epoki lodowej (XV i XVI w.)W okresie od XV do XIX wieku w Karpatach miało miejsce znaczące pogorszenie klimatu. Jest to fragment zjawiska globalnego, przez przedstawicieli różnych nauk o ziemi zwane Małą Epoką Lodową (MEL). Rozważaniom zawartym w artykule towarzyszyło wstępne założenie, że te wydarzenia miały szczególny wpływ na warunki egzystencji społeczności zasiedlających na przestrzeni XV i XVI stulecia obszary położone w strefie podgórskiej i górskiej. Na tym obszarze znajdują się górne piętra zasięgu różnych roślin uprawnych, zwłaszcza kluczowych dla rolnictwa zbóż ozimych. Nawet niewielkie wahania wieloletnich średnich temperatur potrafią znacząco je podwyższać lub obniżać. Wnioski zawarte w pracy sformułowano w oparciu o informacje zawarte w źródłach przede wszystkim o charakterze skarbowym, do tej pory przez historyków klimatu niedoceniane. Analizę zachodzących w poszczególnych osadach zmian przeprowadzono z kolei posługując się metodyką stosowaną przez historyków osadnictwa. Efektem zaprezentowanych niżej badań jest generalny wniosek o istnieniu w analizowanym okresie powszechnego zjawiska narastania na obszarach karpackich elementów modelu gospodarczego funkcjonowania wsi opartego na hodowli. Odbywało się to kosztem ograniczania lub czasami nawet eliminowania zajęć rolniczych. Stanowiło to decydujący powód dla którego poszczególni wielcy właściciele ziemscy sprzyjali lub inicjowali kolonizację opartą na prawie wołoskim lub co najmniej na jego elementach. Z tej przyczyny zwłaszcza XVI wiek stał się okresem gwałtownego rozwoju tego nurtu osadniczego w rejonach karpackich. Miało to poważne konsekwencje nie tylko dla gospodarki. W pracy zwrócono uwagę, że wprowadzanie zmian mogło się odbyć poprzez migracje obcej etnicznie ludności-zaznajomionej z tajemnicami wyspecjalizowanej hodowli, niedostępnej klasycznym rolnikom. Wśród przybyszów pojawili się również etniczni Wołosi. Jedną z konsekwencji tych wędrówek było też znaczne rozszerzenie w Małopolsce zasięgu prawosławia kosztem katolicyzmu.

Replacement of pine by eucalypt plantations: Effects on the diversity and structure of tree assemblages under land abandonment and implications for landscape management

The conversion of natural and semi-natural forests into plantations is an increasing trend across European landscapes under abandonment. In Northwest Iberian Peninsula, current land use changes, namely neglected management (or even abandonment) of maritime pine (Pinus pinaster) and blue gum eucalypt (Eucalyptus globulus) stands by individual landowners, represents a major challenge for landscape planning and management. The consequences of these changes for within-stand tree diversity and structure are still under-investigated. Here, we evaluate how fine-scale diversity and spatial structure of tree assemblages in the core area of stands change with land conversion. Fifty stands were selected in a farming landscape of Northwest Portugal. At the center of each stand, a 100 m2 plot was surveyed for tree species richness and structural diversity, diameter at breast height (DBH) and spatial location of individual trees. Spatial distribution patterns of trees were evaluated using autocorrelation tests and point pattern analyses. Overall, the interior of pine stands showed higher tree diversity, with more heterogeneous DBH structure and complex patterns of tree distribution, compared to eucalypt and even abandoned mixed stands. Such differences seem to result both from the inherent characteristics of the dominant tree species, and from the differential management applied within each type of forest mosaics. Therefore, active landscape management in the study area should be promoted, particularly focusing on pine co-existence with eucalypt stands in the same landscape as a sustainable strategy to achieve both conservation and production goals.

Building multifunctionality into agricultural conservation programs: lessons learned from designing agroforestry systems with central Illinois landowners

AbstractSince 1985, land retirement has been the primary approach used by the federal government for environmental protection of agricultural landscapes, but increasingly it is being supplemented by conservation initiatives on working lands. This shift logically supports agroforestry and other multifunctional approaches as a means to combine production and conservation. However, such approaches can be complex and difficult to design, contributing to the limited adoption in the USA. To understand and improve the integration of multifunctional landscapes into conservation programs, we worked with 15 landowners in a collaborative design process to build unique conservation plans utilizing agroforestry. We interviewed participants before and after the design process to examine the utility of a personalized design process, applicability of agroforestry to conservation programs and pathways to improve conservation policy. We found that landowners strongly preferred working in person for the design process, and being presented a comparison of alternative designs, rather than a single option, especially for novel systems. Agroforestry was seen as a viable method of generating conservation benefits while providing value to the landowners, each of whom stated they were more inclined to adopt such practices irrespective of financial assistance to do so. For conservation programs, landowners suggested reducing their complexity, inflexibility and impersonal nature to improve the integration of multifunctional practices that appeal directly to the practitioner's needs and preferences. These findings are valuable for conservation policy because they complement previous research theory suggesting the value of working collaboratively with landowners in the design of multifunctional landscapes. Personalized solutions that are developed based on the unique characteristics of the local landscape and the preferences of the individual landowner may be retained beyond a specified payment period, rather than being converted back into annual crop production.

Cost and Choice in the Commons: Ostrom and the Case of British Flood Management

How societies can cope with flood risk along coasts and riverbanks is a critical theoretical and empirical problem – particularly in the wake of anthropogenic climate change and the increased severity of floods. An example of this challenge is the growing costs of publicly-funded flood defense in Britain and popular outcries during the regular occasions that the British government fails to protect property and land during heavy rains. Traditional approaches to institutional analysis suggest that flood management is either a public good that only the government is competent to provide or a private good to which individual landowners are ultimately responsible for supplying. We argue that an important cause of failure in flood management is mismatched property rights. This is where the scale of natural events and resources fail to align with the scale of human activities, responsibility and ownership. Moreover, the spatial dimensions of floods mean that their management is often appropriately conceptualized as a common pool resource problem. As a result, commons institutions as conceptualized and observed by Elinor Ostrom are likely to be major contributors to effective flood management. What governance process should decide the size and scope of these institutions? We argue that bottom-up responses to problems of mismatched property rights are facilitated within larger societies that are characterized by market processes. Moreover, the wider presence of price signals delivers to local communities essential knowledge about the cost of maintaining private property and the relative scarcity of the communal goods. We discuss how our theoretical positions align with experience in Britain and what the implications of our theoretical approach are for facilitating the development of better institutions.

A nonparametric bootstrapping method for synthetically generating daily precipitation, water supply, and irrigation demand for rainwater harvesting system storage sizing

This article describes a nonparametric bootstrapping method for synthetically generating daily precipitation, water supply, and irrigation demand for rainwater harvesting (RWH) system storage sizing and reliability determination. The method is illustrated using the case example of determining storage size and associated reliability outcomes for residential RWH systems that provide for the outdoor landscape irrigation demands of single-family homes in Broward and Palm Beach Counties, located in Southeast Florida, U.S.A. The method is useful not only for individual property owners, RWH system designers, and contractors, but also for policy makers who wish to analyze potential savings in water and energy amounts and costs that could result from widespread deployment of residential RWH systems, as discussed in Wurthmann (2019). The method can be easily implemented in Excel and is unique in its combination of:•precision – determines daily levels of precipitation, water supply, and irrigation demand, incorporating the effects of seasonality,•adaptability – user specified historical rainfall data and functional relationships between precipitation and water supply and demand are fully customizable, and•portability – the nonparametric bootstrapping approach overcomes the key challenge posed by parametric stochastic methods; that statistical relationships describing rainfall processes derived in one location are likely not applicable to other locations

Prospects for ecologically and socially sustainable management of total grazing pressure in the southern rangelands of Australia

Numerous large herbivore species, both native and exotic, share the southern Australian rangelands with domestic livestock, which often account for only about half of the total grazing pressure. Although each presents its individual challenge to landholders, the management of kangaroos is a key component of ecologically sustainable management of the region because (a) they represent a significant component of the non-domestic grazing pressure, particularly in areas from which dingos and wild dogs have been (partially) removed; (b) commercial harvesting, the means of control that has the highest social acceptability, has been rendered ineffective by the actions of activist groups and market closure due to food safety concerns; (c) the task is largely beyond the capacity of individual landholders; and (d) the same constraints do not apply to other non-domestic components of total grazing pressure. Management of total grazing pressure, and particularly kangaroos, currently represents a case of market failure because the level of management that can be expected of landholders is not consistent with public expectations for resource conservation and animal welfare. Several avenues are available by which kangaroo management could be advanced to achieve both public and private benefits. These include adoption of an active, adaptive management approach to the kangaroo population, establishment of arrangements that will shift the general perception of kangaroos from pest to resource, development of an appropriate incentive framework to achieve desirable landscape outcomes, and continued evaluation of the benefits and costs of cluster fencing. These initiatives require both a greater commitment from governments to address the market failure and a proactive stance by industry to engage stakeholders, self-regulate, and objectively demonstrate environmental and animal welfare credentials.

Socioeconomic and Environmental Predictors of Estuarine Shoreline Hard Armoring

Rising sea levels and growing coastal populations are intensifying interactions at the land-sea interface. To stabilize upland and protect human developments and infrastructure from coastal hazards, property owners commonly emplace hard armoring structures, such as bulkheads and revetments, along the estuarine shoreline. While research regarding the ecological and economic impacts that accompany hard armoring implementation has garnered significant attention, there have been limited efforts to document the extent of hard armoring or identify drivers of hard armoring patterns. This study addresses a knowledge gap in the documentation and understanding of hard armoring patterns and their drivers at the scale of individual landowners, by assessing the distribution of hard armoring along the Georgia coastline. Using a set of environmental and socioeconomic predictor variables in coordination with a novel fine-scale census of hard armoring, we present a parsimonious statistical model that predicts the probability of hard armoring emplacement at the parcel level. Our model has a high correct classification accuracy and we find that a variety of interacting environmental and socioeconomic influences contribute to patterns of shoreline armoring; in particular, the presence or absence of armoring on a neighboring parcel has a strong association with the probability of hard armoring. Our model also suggests that continued sea level rise and coastal population growth could trigger increases in armoring implementation into the future. Thus, we underscore the importance of considering both the current and potential future distributions of hard armoring when evaluating associated impacts of sea level rise on ecological systems and in socioeconomic evaluations. For example, evolving distributions of hard armoring should be considered in predictions of salt marsh sustainability through inland migration. In addition to providing the first parcel-level census analysis of hard armoring at a scope relevant to local and regional government decision-making, this study also presents a methodology adaptable to assessing patterns of hard armoring in other study areas. With improved understanding of hard armoring distributions, SLR response plans can be fully informed to design more efficient scenarios for both urban development and coastal ecosystems.

Classifying private landowners to improve understanding of management decisions and conservation opportunities in urbanizing forested landscapes

Viewed as coupled natural and human systems, urbanizing forested landscapes exhibit fascinating and complex dynamics, where landowner decisions and biophysical processes together influence conservation and development outcomes. To improve understanding of land management decisions and conservation opportunities on private lands in these landscapes, we developed a landowner typology that accounts for heterogeneity among landowners that goes beyond ownership objectives and investigated its usefulness in predicting individual private landowners' stated intentions to implement diverse land management actions. Using survey responses collected from private landowners in two metropolitan areas in Maine, USA, we focused on understanding differences in owners' stated likelihood of implementing four conservation practices (i.e., forest management plan, conservation easement, water quality protection, and wildlife habitat conservation) and three land tenure actions (i.e., land sales and large and small subdivisions). Cluster analysis based on measures of place attachment values, stewardship beliefs, and forest production objectives revealed four distinct landowner classes that, in turn, increased the explanatory power of our predictive models of management intentions. Our findings support consideration of heterogeneity beyond production objectives to improve understanding of landowner decision-making, the design and performance of conservation programs, and engagement with landowners. Adjusting data, analysis, and communication strategies to recognize these multiple motivations of landowners has potential to advance the science and practice of conserving forested landscapes.