Scholarly Work - Earth Sciences
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://scholarworks.montana.edu/handle/1/8747
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Item Ranching Sustainability in the Northern Great Plains: An Appraisal of Local Perspectives(2018-06) Haggerty, Julia Hobson; Auger, Mason; Epstein, KathleenIn eight counties in Montana, South Dakota, and Nebraska characterized by high levels of intact Northern Great Plains grassland habitat, ranchers observe the following sustainability challenges: Land prices and lack of land for purchase Profitability Family succession and community change (depopulation) Notably, they do not anticipate extensive cropland conversion in the western edge of the Northern Great Plains. We observed differences in the experience of these challenges based on the ranch ownership lifecycle. In response, we recommend that conservation and government programs focused on sustainable ranching should adopt a framework for strategy and program evaluated based on the lifecycle framework. Assisting emerging ranchers, according to this research effort, will demand more than coming up with loan funds or extra forage. Rather it will mean rethinking the existing pathway that operators follow on the route from emerging to established ranchers. In addition, conservation and government programs and future research should address the impacts and patterns of land agglomeration in the Northern Great Plains.Item Post-disaster agricultural transitions in Nepal(2018-11) DiCarlo, Jessica; Epstein, Kathleen; Marsh, Robin; Måren, Inger E.In Spring 2015, a series of earthquakes and aftershocks struck Nepal. The earthquakes caused significant changes in labor and land availability, cash income needs, and land quality. We examine how these post-earthquake impacts converged with ongoing agricultural shifts. Earthquake-related socio-economic and landscape changes specifically motivate the adoption of cardamom, Amomum subulatum, a high-value ecologically beneficial, and low labor commercial crop. We investigate reasons for the increased interest in cardamom post-earthquake, and challenges associated with it. We find that adopting cardamom serves as an important post-disaster adaptation. However, more broadly, unevenly distributed interventions coupled with the high capital costs of agricultural transition exacerbate social differentiation in communities after the disaster. Adoption is often limited to economically better off smallholder farmers. This paper extends previous research on disasters and smallholder farming by highlighting the specific potential of disasters to accelerate agricultural transitions and resulting inequality from the changes.Item Land Use Diversification and Intensification on Elk Winter Range in Greater Yellowstone: Framework and Agenda for Social-Ecological Research(2018-03) Haggerty, Julia Hobson; Epstein, Kathleen; Stone, Michael; Cross, Paul C.Amenity migration describes the movement of peoples to rural landscapes and the transition toward tourism and recreation and away from production-oriented land uses (ranching, timber harvesting). The resulting mosaic of land uses and community structures has important consequences for wildlife and their management. This research note examines amenity-driven changes to social-ecological systems in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, specifically in lower elevations that serve as winter habitat for elk. We present a research agenda informed by a preliminary and exploratory mixed-methods investigation: the creation of a “social-impact” index of land use change on elk winter range and a focus group with wildlife management experts. Our findings suggest that elk are encountering an increasingly diverse landscape with respect to land use, while new ownership patterns increase the complexity of social and community dynamics. These factors, in turn, contribute to increasing difficulty meeting wildlife management objectives. To deal with rising complexity across social and ecological landscapes of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, future research will focus on property life cycle dynamics, as well as systems approaches.Item Recovery and adaptation after the 2015 Nepal earthquakes: a smallholder household perspective(2018-06) Epstein, Kathleen; DiCarlo, Jessica; Marsh, Robin; Adhikari, Bikash; Paudel, Dinesh; Ray, Isha; Maren, Inger E.Communities reliant on subsistence and small-scale production are typically more vulnerable than others to disasters such as earthquakes. We study the earthquakes that struck Nepal in the spring of 2015 to investigate their impacts on smallholder communities and the diverse trajectories of recovery at the household and community levels. We focus on the first year following the earthquakes because this is when households were still devastated, yet beginning to recover and adapt. Through survey questionnaires, focus group discussions, open-ended interviews, and observations at public meetings we analyze physical impacts to farming systems and cropping cycles. We investigate respondent reports of loss and recovery through a new social-ecological recovery assessment instrument and find that diversification of livelihoods and access to common resources, alongside robust community institutions, were critical components of coping and recovery. There was widespread damage to subsistence farming infrastructure, which potentially accelerated ongoing transitions to cash crop adoption. We also find that perceptions of recovery varied widely among and within the typical predictors of recovery, such as caste and farm size, in sometimes unexpected ways. Although postdisaster recovery has material and psychosocial dimensions, our work shows that these may not change in the same direction.Item Recovery and Adaptation after the 2015 earthquakes; A smallholder farmer perspective(2018) Epstein, Kathleen; DiCarlo, Jessica; Marsh, Robin; Adhikari, Bikash; Paudel, Dinesh; Ray, Isha; Måren, Inger E.Communities reliant on subsistence and small-scale production are typically more vulnerable than others to disasters such as earthquakes. We study the earthquakes that struck Nepal in the spring of 2015 to investigate their impacts on smallholder communities and the diverse trajectories of recovery at the household and community levels. We focus on the first year following the earthquakes because this is when households were still devastated, yet beginning to recover and adapt. Through survey questionnaires, focus group discussions, open-ended interviews, and observations at public meetings we analyze physical impacts to farming systems and cropping cycles. We investigate respondent reports of loss and recovery through a new social-ecological recovery assessment instrument and find that diversification of livelihoods and access to common resources, alongside robust community institutions, were critical components of coping and recovery. There was widespread damage to subsistence farming infrastructure, which potentially accelerated ongoing transitions to cash crop adoption. We also find that perceptions of recovery varied widely among and within the typical predictors of recovery, such as caste and farm size, in sometimes unexpected ways. Although postdisaster recovery has material and psychosocial dimensions, our work shows that these may not change in the same direction.