The capability of a GIS to contribute to the social assessment of forest communities: a case study of the central Cascades Adaptive Management Area

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have become an essential tool for evaluationand monitoring the biophysical data of natural landscapes. This study addresses thepotential for using GIS in the social assessment of human landscapes that are associatedwith geographic regions of interest. Using the communities surrounding Oregon'sfederally designated Central Cascades Adaptive Management Area (CCAMA) as a casestudy, this project attempts to incorporate primary and secondary socio-economic datainto map layers suitable for assessment and monitoring purposes. The purpose is two-fold: to provide the responsible resource management agencies (Forest Service andBureau of Land Management) with useful information about their constituentcommunities and to test the value of GIS as an aid in the social assessment process.
Initially, population density maps and interviews with community leaders andagency personnel were used to derive maps of aggregate census blocks for spatiallydefined relevant communities within the study area. These "community maps" becamethe basis for analyses of the human ecology and provided a method for assessingcommunity well-being.
This study replicates protocols established on the Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project(SNEP) and two products have resulted. First, a socio-economic scale has beendeveloped drawing on data from the Housing and Population Census. Variables ofinterest include housing tenure, poverty level, education, employment, and publicassistance and have been used to indicate a measure of community well-being. Second,a community capacity scale has been constructed based on quantitative survey data fromkey informants. This scale includes composite measures of physical infrastructure (e.g.condition of the infrastructure, financial resources, emphasis on quality of business andcommunity), human capital (e.g. support for education, knowledge of the environment,awareness of competitive markets, use of information resources), and social capital orcivic responsiveness (e.g. ability to work together, levels of volunteerism, multi-generational family orientation). The two scales combine to provide an assessment ofcommunity well-being.
The data from the socio-economic and community capacity scales are plotted onthe community maps in the GIS. This allows land managers to visualize the relativedifferences in their constituent communities. It also provides baseline information and amethodology to continue monitoring social time series data.