It’s no secret that the Charlotte region has been rapidly growing more urban over the past few decades. Yet despite the record expansion of the urbanized area experienced during economic boom times, private landowners cling to over two million acres of undeveloped land in the Charlotte metropolitan region. Why do these remnants of green persist? In many cases the development value exceeds the revenues owners would get from working the land; it seems there must be non-monetary factors influencing landowners’ decisions to hold onto those lands.
To examine the complex interactions between people and the physical, economic, and social environments in the Charlotte region that drive the decision not to develop, UNC Charlotte researchers have been awarded a competitive grant from the Urban Long-Term Research Areas Exploratory (ULTRA-EX) program of the U.S. Forest Service and the National Science Foundation (NSF). Gaining a predictive understanding of these interactions will allow the region to better anticipate responses to changes in policies and economic market conditions as it seeks both economic growth and sustainable natural landscapes.
One of only 17 awards made nationally for these pilot urban research projects, the “Piedmont Landscapes in Transition” project incorporates two highly innovative approaches in its use of “participatory science” and its blending of social science and landscape ecology methodologies. The project is a collaborative effort between the four research partners comprising UNC Charlotte’s Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI), the UNC Charlotte Center for Applied GIScience (CAGIS), the UNC Charlotte Infrastructure, Design, Environment and Sustainability Center (IDEAS), the UNC Charlotte Visualization Center (VisCenter), and the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute; as well as UNC Chapel Hill’s Department of City and Regional Planning.
The two-year ULTRA-EX pilot project focuses on woodlands, with a longer-term goal of including farmland and other natural landscapes. The goal is to understand why woodlands persist, and if a mix of undeveloped land-use types and urbanization can coexist in equilibrium. To do this, researchers will conduct “basic research,” building sophisticated models of the various factors influencing landowners’ decisions to maintain or develop their woodlands. The factors to be explored include economic considerations such as land development value, timber harvesting value, and potential carbon trading value, and more intangible factors such as ecosystem, cultural and human values. A sampling of woodland owners will be invited to participate in interviews and surveys to elicit data about the relative weight given to these various factors in their decision-making. Data about local, state and federal programs and laws affecting land holdings will also be factored into the analysis.
The “basic research” component, though, depends heavily on the project’s “participatory science,” or community engagement, component. Regional organizations will form a Stakeholders Group that will consult with researchers on what factors to include in the model, how to identify landowners willing to participate, and how the results may be used throughout the region. The UNC Charlotte Urban Institute is leading the community engagement effort, convening stakeholder meetings and conducting landowner interviews and surveys. Stakeholder organizations that participated in the grant application process include the USDA Forest Service, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the North Carolina Wildlife Resource Commission, North Carolina State University Forestry Department Extension, Gaston County Cooperative Extension, Catawba Regional Council of Governments, Centralina Council of Governments, Catawba Lands Conservancy, Land Trust for Central North Carolina and Nations Ford Land Trust. They have been joined by local planners, cooperative extension agents, economic and real estate developers, non-profits, and state foresters.
In the end, the research team hopes the community engagement piece of the project will not only enhance the basic research itself, but also widen the range of land-use change solutions and possibilities available to regional planners, conservation practitioners, land managers, policy makers, and concerned citizens. “Decision makers can make policies, but no one knows right now if they are going to work. It’s a tricky thing to try to figure it out,” said Ross Meentemeyer, UNC Charlotte professor of Geography and Earth Sciences and the ULTRA-EX grant’s principal investigator.“If we can help a bit, it will be an important contribution.”
Following the launch of the project this fall, the researchers’ focus in 2011 will be on working with the stakeholders and landowners to develop the data needed for the basic research, with 2012 dedicated to building and testing the models and exploring the results with stakeholders. The project’s final report is anticipated to be released in early 2013.
Sara Gleave wrote this article while a graduate student working at the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute in 2010-2014.
