Status of Economic Criteria and Indicators for the Sustainable Rangeland Roundtable

1
Status of Economic Criteria and Indicators for
the Sustainable Rangeland Roundtable

• John A. Tanaka and L. Allen Torell

2
Core Group

• Marty Beutler, South Dakota State University
• Dan McCollum, U.S. Forest Service
• Charles Curtin, Malapai Borderlands Group, Arid
  Lands Project
• Mark Brunson, Utah State University
• Lou Swanson, Colorado State University
• Aaron Harp, Policy Analysis Center for Western
  Public Lands, University of Idaho
• Mike Manfredo, Colorado State University

3
Role of Economic CIs

• What happens to economic system as other systems
  change
• Find ways to measure those effects

4
Process

• Adapt Montreal Process Criterion 6
• Adapt Roundtable on Sustainable Forests
• New issues from SRR meetings
• Identify and evaluate indicators for
  understanding economic sustainability

5
Framework for Analysis

• County level
• Sampling protocol
• Developed indices to adjust for size and
  development of individual counties
• Study to understand social, economic indicator
  relationships to ecological changes

6
Indicators

• Commodity of AUMs
• Recreation fees and values
• Investments improvements, facilities
• Research, development, education
• Employment
• Conservation easements
• Trade flows

7
Challenges and Opportunities

• Definitional
• Relationships
• Scale

8
Definitional Questions

• What is being measured
• How is it being measured

9
Relationships
10
Scale

• Individual
• Community
• County
• Region
• National

11
Conclusion and Future Work

• No nationally accepted framework
• Continue work on existing indicators
• Develop framework