Grantee Research Project Results

2003 Progress Report: A Dynamic Spatial Socioeconomic and Ecological Landscape Model to Assess Environmental Impacts of Forest Change on the Southern Cumberland Plateau of Tennessee

EPA Grant Number: R829802
Title: A Dynamic Spatial Socioeconomic and Ecological Landscape Model to Assess Environmental Impacts of Forest Change on the Southern Cumberland Plateau of Tennessee
Investigators: Gottfried, Robert , Haskell, David , Williams, Douglass , Evans, Jonathan
Institution: University of the South
EPA Project Officer: Hahn, Intaek
Project Period: September 1, 2002 through August 31, 2005 (Extended to August 31, 2006)
Project Period Covered by this Report: September 1, 2002 through August 31, 2003
Project Amount: $248,265
RFA: Futures: Research in Socio-Economics (2001) RFA Text
Research Category: Environmental Justice

Objective:

The objectives of the proposed research are to: (1) develop a spatial socioeconomic model of change in land use/land cover (LULC) for the Southern Cumberland Plateau for the period of 1980-2000; (2) integrate this model with the Small Area Assessment Forestry Demonstration Project's bird, amphibian, and water-quality landscape models to understand the socioeconomic processes bringing about environmental change in the region; (3) use this understanding and the model to assess potential future environmental impacts of likely socioeconomic events or trends; and (4) investigate the impacts of possible policy responses.

Progress Summary:

The project started in September 2002. We have spent most of this first year developing basic data, particularly digitizing the 2000/2001 tax maps for the Plateau surface of the seven-county study area. We have digitized all parcels 10 acres in size and larger. This has taken longer than we anticipated. Franklin County purchased a tax map from the state, so we did not have to digitize that county. Connecting the county tax assessor data to the tax maps proved challenging because of the antiquated database structure used by the state and because they were not constructed for research purposes; however, we have completed that task. We also created a 1997 layer of structures digitized from remotely sensed imagery. The tax assessor data provide a history of as many as four past transactions for a given parcel. These data are fairly reliable from 1990 to the present. Before then, tax assessors often did not record transactions. We have used these data to create a large sample of arms-length (market) transactions for the study period. Because the data do not give the acres involved, we do not know if a transaction involves a splitting or aggregating of parcels. Therefore, we have consulted the deeds for these transactions in four of the seven counties, recording, where available, the residence of the buyer and seller, buyer type (individual, business, timber company, government, other), and the acreage. We plan to complete the data collection this semester.

The previous U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grant that provided the land use/land cover data for the Science to Achieve Results (STAR) research did not provide a 1992 pine coverage as anticipated. The lack of this coverage would eliminate one of the data points in our time series for pine, jeopardizing our time series regression analyses for pine. We have decided to proceed with the creation of such a coverage for pine only.

On three occasions, heavy rains have flooded our work area, causing hardware and work downtime. We also were victims of the recent computer viruses and worms that crippled most institutions across the United States, causing even more downtime. After considerable work with our data, we came to the conclusion that it was necessary to migrate everything into an enterprise geodatabase, ArcSDE. Although temporarily slowing us down, it will vastly improve our speed, analysis capabilities, and metadata entry in the long run.

We also have discovered that the Plateau is more heavily dominated by business-oriented ownerships than we realized. Although the typical land rent model still applies, we need to amend our model to allow for the importance of different enterprise goals and missions, which may affect decisions to change land use. We are searching the Web and reference works to learn more about the stated missions of the business owners and will decide this semester how to incorporate business goals into our framework.

The theoretical framework is mostly complete, but one issue remains. Few studies have used a hedonic framework where hedonic prices vary over time because of changes in exogenous economic variables. We are working on a process that would allow us to do so, and expect to decide on an approach within the next month or so.

We have developed a method using the tax assessor data to create annual coverages of residential land use for each parcel (assuming fixed parcel boundaries for the years 2000 or 2001, depending upon the county). In addition, we have started the process of calculating the percentage of every parcel in a given LULC based on the LULC coverages from the previous study.

In summary, we have achieved only some of the original objectives for this year because of the difficulties outlined above and the delay in hiring our research associate. The original objectives for this year were to develop the theoretical model and databases, analyze landowner surveys, estimate the model of land prices and transition probabilities, and develop coverages of landowner types and reservation prices. We have almost finished the theoretical model, completed the databases, and developed landowner coverages. We still have to develop the coverage for reservation prices, analyze landowner surveys, and estimate the models. Despite the delays, we have not changed the objectives of the project from the original application.

Results to Date

Our analysis has proceeded to the data exploration stage. Our preliminary exploration of the data reveals a very high level of land concentration. Fifty-seven percent of the land is owned by entities from outside of the county or a neighboring county. Thirty-eight percent of the land is owned by someone outside of the State of Tennessee. Timber companies own 19 percent of the Plateau study area, and nontimber businesses own an additional 18 percent. When owners are ranked by total acres owned in the study area, the largest 10 percent of owners hold 78 percent of the area, but the largest 20 percent own 86 percent. Thus, land use change, and its corresponding environmental impact, most likely will originate from the actions of large landowners, many of whom reside outside of the area and outside of Tennessee.

If appraised land value per acre (exclusive of improvements) is an indicator of development pressure, preliminary inspection reveals that most development pressure on parcels 10 acres and larger appears to occur on land near previously settled areas and near roads. Appraised value per acre of bluff sites, which can possess great scenic amenity values, so far appears highest in the Sewanee/Monteagle areas, not consistently throughout the region. Whether the divestiture of corporate timber lands may lead to a development boom remains to be seen. The demand for residential land, however, appears to be concentrated in certain areas. Thus, how the demand for residential land may spatially relate to changes in its supply will be a question for future analysis.

Future Activities:

Over the next year, we will collect transactions data from the seven courthouses to enable us to develop a price series for the hedonic analyses. We will resolve the remaining theoretical issues dealing with performing hedonic analysis over time and continue cleaning up the tax and related data. In addition, we will create a 1992 coverage of pine land use by comparing LULC coverages for 1980 and 1997. Polygons that were in pine by 1997, but were in native hardwood in 1980, will be checked to see whether or not they were in pine in 1992. This will lessen the amount of work required to create a 1992 coverage. We can do this without any extra expenditure of funds from the EPA STAR grant. Also, with funding from other sources, we will create a 2003 pine coverage that will enable us to examine pine after the southern pine beetle epidemic.

Soon, we will consolidate the survey results from the two surveys of landowners and link them to the parcels in the geographic information system. An owner’s responses will be linked to all of his/her holdings. During the next year, we will develop the modeling framework for the transition probability and process models, create coverages required for the hedonic analyses, and perform the necessary regression analyses. Accordingly, we should be able to begin implementing and validating the model and performing initial simulations toward the end of the next project year.

Journal Articles:

No journal articles submitted with this report: View all 10 publications for this project

Supplemental Keywords:

forest, public policy, socioeconomic, conservation, Southeast, rural South, Tennessee, TN, land use, land cover, LULC., RFA, Ecosystem Protection/Environmental Exposure & Risk, Scientific Discipline, Geographic Area, Economic, Social, & Behavioral Science Research Program, Economics & Decision Making, State, Forestry, decision-making, Monitoring/Modeling, Social Science, Ecology and Ecosystems, Environmental Monitoring, economic research, Tennesee (TN), socioeconomics, water quality, landscape ecology, social impact analysis, ecological models, environmental decision making, forests, monitoring, spatial landscape model, remote sensing, forest conservation decisions, land use, forest reources, environmental impact comparison, GIS, modeling, land management, forest ecosystem, decision support tool, remote sensing data, decision making, model-based analysis

Relevant Websites:

http://lal.sewanee.edu Exit

Progress and Final Reports:

Original Abstract

2004 Progress Report

2005 Progress Report

Final Report