Browsing by Subject "community capacity"

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    A Changing Climate on Minnesota’s North Shore: Identifying Values, Concerns, & Actions for the Protection & Restoration of Water
    (2019-12) Rutledge, Annamarie
    Community resilience along Minnesota’s North Shore depends upon freshwater ecosystems and the services they provide. Climate change threatens many ecosystem benefits and there is uncertainty regarding how water resources will be affected by a changing climate. By conducting a community design charrette on the North Shore, we identified values, concerns, and actions for water resources through three activities: a pre-survey, Q sort, and collage exercise. The collage exercise brought in human-inspired ideas such as fragility and the North Shore as an identify, a home, and place of work. Based on the results of the Q sort, the study group resonated with the biospheric typology the most, followed by altruistic. The Q sort also generated three narratives that assist in understanding opinion clusters: protection realist, cultural preservationist, and provisioning utilitarian. Consensus statements from the Q sort included natural systems and processes to be sustained and habitat for native fish and wildlife to survive. Out of four water program funding areas, safe drinking water and healthy fish and wildlife populations were identified as top priorities. These findings provide insight into the perspectives of North Shore stakeholders and can be used to inform action and investments in water resources and build productive, collaborative relationships.
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    Volunteer performance in urban forest survey initiatives
    (2017-05) Bancks, Nicholas
    In 2010, the University of Minnesota Forest Resources Department implemented a community engagement program that drew upon community volunteers. This program sought to help greater Minnesota communities assess and mitigate the potential damages brought upon by the arrival of the invasive emerald ash borer. Volunteers were trained to survey their local urban forest, collecting information on species, size, age, and condition of the city trees as part of the process. A growing number of environmental monitoring programs and natural resource managers have begun to utilize and incorporate volunteer- collected data as part of their comprehensive management strategies. Volunteer-driven programs can help to enhance community capacity and participation in future municipal resource management challenges while providing cost-effective alternatives for local municipalities. However, little information exists regarding the real and perceived accuracy of volunteers undertaking urban forest survey initiatives. An evaluation of nine community tree surveys and two training protocols has provided assessment of volunteer accuracy regarding tree survey data collection.