Browsing by Author "Sketch, Mary"

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    Land use decisions after the Conservation Reserve Program: Re-enrollment, reversion, and persistence in the southern Great Plains
    Barnes, Jessica C.; Sketch, Mary; Gramza, Ashley R.; Sorice, Michael G.; Iovanna, Rich; Dayer, Ashley A. (2020-07-23)
    The temperate grasslands of North America remain one of the most modified and threatened ecosystems on the planet. In the United States, the conservation of grassland-dependent wildlife continues to be challenged by the widespread conversion of privately owned grasslands to cropland. Recent analyses indicate that land exiting the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), the country's largest private lands conservation program, is a primary source of grassland conversion. In this mixed-methods study, we employed focus groups and mail surveys to understand the decisions made by landowners in the southern Great Plains as their CRP contracts near expiration and up to 7 years following expiration. We explored both the post-contract intentions of landowners with fields currently enrolled in CRP and the self-reported, post-contract decisions of landowners whose CRP contracts expired between 2011 and 2017. Interest in re-enrolling in CRP upon contract expiration was high among landowners with current fields; however, over half of landowners with former CRP fields reported being unable to re-enroll when they tried. We found higher rates of grassland persistence than have been previously reported, but also detected temporal patterns that suggest that cropland reversion is increasingly likely as the time since contract expiration increases. This study highlights the need for increased attention to the barriers that preclude transition into other conservation programs following CRP and more detailed understanding of what drives landowner decision-making about re-enrollment and post-CRP land use. These insights will be critical for increasing the effectiveness of programs for enduring grassland conservation on private lands.
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    Landowners and the Conservation Reserve Program: Understanding needs and motivations to cultivate participation, retention, and ongoing stewardship behavior
    Barnes, Jessica C.; Dayer, Ashley A.; Sketch, Mary; Gramza, Ashley R.; Nocera, Tomas; Steinmetz, Ally; Sorice, Michael G. (Virginia Tech, 2019-03-07)
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    Western Ranchers' Perspectives on Enablers and Constraints to Flood Irrigation
    Sketch, Mary; Dayer, Ashley A.; Metcalf, Alexander L. (2020-03)
    Flood irrigation on western rangelands is important for diverse social and ecological reasons, providing forage for many agricultural operations and maintaining many critical wetlands across the region. However, recent debate over the efficiency of flood irrigation and resulting transition to other "more efficient" types of irrigation has put many of the working wet meadows sustained by flood irrigation at risk. As the sustainability of these landscapes is primarily dependent on ranchers' management decisions, we sought to gain a deeper understanding of factors influencing ranchers who flood irrigate and how these factors interrelate. We applied the Community Capitals Framework to explore what considerations act as enablers and constraints to maintaining flood irrigation and to evaluate the role of each type of capital in enabling and constraining the coproduction of working wet meadows for ranchers and the environment. Our qualitative analysis of facilitated workshop transcripts and observation notes from two study areas within the Intermountain West showed that ranchers perceived constraining and enabling factors of flood irrigation related to all seven types of community capitals: natural, financial, built, cultural, human, social, and political. The irrigation methods used by ranchers were heavily influenced by environmental components of the landscape rather than reflecting a choice among alternative methods. Other prominent enablers included a commitment toward maintaining the natural history of the landscape and the ranching lifestyle. Primary constraints included the impact of public misperception and the ability to pass their operation on to the next generation. Ranchers weighed multiple considerations simultaneously in a holistic, community-scale approach to management decisions and described how diverse enablers and constraints interacted to determine the viability of flood irrigation and ranching. These results indicate rancher decisions are driven by complex social-ecological considerations and demonstrate the importance of each capital type to rangeland conservation. (C) 2019 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. on behalf of The Society for Range Management.