The concept of "place" is increasingly being considered in the management of natural resources, and practitioners now have a new resource that can help them recognize and respond to the relationships people have with the places in their lives.
Place-Based Conservation: Perspectives from the Social Sciences, a new book co-edited by the Pacific Northwest Research Station's Linda Kruger, can help managers take a human-centered approach to conservation. The book is published by Springer Verlag and is available from http://www.springer.com/978-94-007-5801-8.
"Many public land managers recognize the importance of understanding the attachments people have to places that are special to them," said Kruger, a research social scientist who co-edited the book along with William Stewart, with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and Daniel Williams, with the Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station. "Our book provides a comprehensive resource for researchers and practitioners to help build the conceptual grounding necessary to understand and to effectively practice place-based conservation."
The book is divided into four parts—"Conceptual Issues of Place-Based Conservation," "Experiencing Place," "Representing Place," and "Mapping Place"—and includes 18 chapters. Its authors are drawn from various disciplines, including human geography, urban planning, geographic information systems, and community development to provide understanding and practical advice.
"Place-Based Conservation explores a variety of ways to dig deeper to understand how people perceive places, strategies to involve such knowledge into decisionmaking, and recognition that planning processes are opportunities to negotiate and legitimize meanings of places being managed," said Kruger.
The Pacific Northwest Research Station—headquartered in Portland, Ore.—generates and communicates scientific knowledge that helps people make informed choices about natural resources and the environment. The station has 11 laboratories and centers located in Alaska, Oregon, and Washington and about 390 employees. Learn more online at http://www.fs.fed.us/pnw.