Assessing Pennsylvania County Planning Commissioners' Knowledge of and Attitudes towards Forests and Woodlands Conservation
Open Access
- Author:
- Tripeaux, Kalaia
- Graduate Program:
- Forest Resources
- Degree:
- Master of Science
- Document Type:
- Master Thesis
- Date of Defense:
- March 18, 2020
- Committee Members:
- William F. Elmendorf, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
Allyson Muth, Committee Member
Alan R Graefe, Committee Member
Rachel Reyna, Committee Member
David Eissenstat, Program Head/Chair - Keywords:
- County planning commissioners
Forests
Woodlands
Conservation
Attitudes
Knowledge
Natural resources - Abstract:
- Pennsylvania county planning commissioners are tasked with many duties. Some duties include but are not limited to: administering current land use plans and regulations, updating comprehensive plans and regulations to manage the changing needs of development and environmental protection of natural resources for the betterment of peoples’ livelihood within a county. For many years, it has been thought that county planning commissioners lack knowledge of the full set of regulatory and non-regulatory tools available to balance development and conservation. Because of their roles in local land use decisions, their knowledge of and attitudes toward natural resource conservation are important; however; those attitudes have not been fully considered or understood. The purpose of this study was to explore Pennsylvania county planning commissioners’ attitudes towards the importance of forests and woodlands conservation and their knowledge of ecosystem services and the threats to these services through lack of forest conservation. It also explored county planning commissioners’ knowledge of non-regulatory and regulatory conservation policy and their attitudes towards using these policies to conserve forests and woodlands. For further understanding of the knowledge and attitudes of county planning commissioners, the results of this study also provided other interesting observations of county planning commissioners. Notably, there was a significant gender imbalance among county planning commissioners with seventy-five percent of respondents being male. The important information provided by the results of this study improved understanding of how county planning commissioners think about natural resource conservation in Pennsylvania.