Social Considerations for the Maintenance of Ecosystem Services in Agricultural Landscapes

Global reports citing declining biodiversity have resulted in calls for an increased focus on private lands’ role in biodiversity conservation. Conservation in private lands can be thought of as an integrative, socio-ecological challenge. Given the impacts that private land management practices can have in agricultural lands, understanding the factors that contribute to landowners’ management decisions can be especially important. Ecosystem services, and in particular cultural services, have been employed as a way to account for the contributions of ecosystems to human well-being and embed people within their environment. Using ecosystem services as a framework and a mailed questionnaire, my dissertation examined the relationship between: landownership motivations and land management activities with consideration of demographic factors; social factors that are associated with coordination of land management activities that have the potential to scale up conservation activities; and incorporation of ecosystem services into conservation planning to understand their distribution and account for tradeoffs associated with different approaches to conservation programs in the Teas Gulf Coast Prairie. I identified that landowners who had higher place-based motivations were more likely to be actively engaged in wildlife-centered land management practices than those with landownership motivations more focused in other areas. I also observed that landowners who consulted with professionals, had larger, more diverse consultation networks and more civic engagement were more likely to increase their land management coordination or coordinate with their neighbors. I identified the presence and distribution of Cultural Biodiversity in the GCP. Cultural Biodiversity reflects the values that people attribute to wildlife, both via management and recreational hunting. When considering Cultural Biodiversity in conjunction with conservation value, it becomes apparent that in the GCP, conservation strategies that engage intrinsic and extrinsic motivations are needed to most effectively and efficiently engage landowners. Taken together, my dissertation research highlights the importance of considering cultural ecosystem services and contributes to the emerging dialogue about the contribution of landowner-centered approaches to understanding social-ecological systems and for informing policies. My dissertation also highlights how relational values can provide an avenue for future research that considers the embeddedness of humans and their environment