Incentives to Encourage Landowners’ Management for New England Cottontail Rabbit Habitat in New York’s Eastern Hudson Valley

Click on the PDF for the full report. Visit the HDRU website for a complete listing of HDRU publications at: http://hdru.dnr.cornell.edu

Addressing climate change impacts on agriculture and natural resources: Barriers and priorities for land-grant universities in the northeastern United States

Climate change has serious implications for agricultural production, natural resource management, and food security. In the United States, land-grant universities and the U.S. Cooperative Extension System have a critical role to play in conducting basic and applied research related to climate change and translating findings into meaningful programming. However, land-grant universities and Extension have had difficulty maintaining their roles as the preeminent source of trusted information on complex topics like climate change. To help guide research and programming agendas of land-grant universities, the authors explored the barriers and priorities that researchers and Extension personnel at 16 northeastern land-grant universities perceive as they pursue climate change research and programming. Through an online survey, respondents indicated their perceptions of barriers related to information, workplace, and target audiences as well as the priorities they perceived as most important for land-grant universities to pursue. Statistical analysis indicated that lack of funding, lack of time, lack of locally relevant climate information, and challenges with target audiences were among the most critical barriers. In terms of future priorities, respondents indicated securing funding for applied research, training Extension educators, and developing locally relevant decision support tools as the most important activities northeastern land-grant universities can undertake. Based on these findings, this study concludes that land-grant universities will need to strategically pursue research and educational programming on climate change in ways that integrate research and Extension and simultaneously address climate change and other concerns of land managers

Understanding Landowner and Municipal Official Perceptions of Water Quality in a Local Watershed

Click on the PDF for the full report. Visit the HDRU website for a complete listing of HDRU publications at: http://hdru.dnr.cornell.edu

Management Activities of Private Forest Landowners in New York State

CaRDI Research & Policy Brief, Issue 15. Click on the PDF for the full report. Visit the HDRU website for a complete listing of HDRU publications at: http://hdru.dnr.cornell.edu/. A complete listing of CaRDI publications can be found on its site: https://cardi.cals.cornell.edu/

Planning Across Generations: Helping Family Landowners Maintain Their Ties to the Land

Many land-owning families face the difficult challenge of maintaining their property in family ownership, an issue deserving greater attention among Extension educators. In the longitudinal study reported here we assessed the effectiveness of an educational program in helping family woodland owners prepare to pass land on to the next generation and found an impact on participants\u27 reported behavior. About 18-months after the Ties to the Land workshop, 71% of respondents reported taking at least one succession planning action as a result their participation

Conservation and Land Use Planning: Linking Municipal Capacity and Biodiversity Outcomes

CaRDI Research & Policy Brief Issue 7

The Social Fabric of Watershed Management: Comparison of Citizen-Based and Agency-Based Organizations

This research offers an exploration of the social networks within two distinct watershed groups in the Hudson River, New York State, USA: citizen-based and agency-based organizations. Through a social network analysis of their operations and interactions, this study unveils the complex dynamics and roles of individual nodes in facilitating nine types of connections, such as political and financial, within these networks. The citizen-based organization demonstrated denser and more cohesive networks, suggesting robust relationships and enhanced resilience and adaptability. In contrast, the agency-based organization exhibited more hierarchical networks. This study employs both network-level and node-level analyses to examine the social networks within watershed groups. Our network-level analysis focuses on metrics such as density, average degree, and hierarchy, while our node-level analysis examines clustering coefficients and influence. It also explores ego networks through an analysis of their density and the effective size of structural holes. Our finding is that the social networks of the two groups are quite distinct, and there is limited exchange of information and resources between them. However, we discovered that effective communication among a few well-connected individuals (e.g., those with high influence values) within each group can enhance the effectiveness and resilience of these networks. These analyses aim to provide a detailed understanding of the social dynamics within regional watershed groups

Community Adaptation to Flooding in a Changing Climate: Municipal Officials’ Actions Decision-Making and Barriers

CaRDI Research & Policy Brief Issue 5