Hi everyone.
I am a new master's student here at UVM
at the Rubenstein School,
and I'm just starting my second career.
I was fortunate enough
to find my way into this research project
with my advisor, Cecilia Danks,
and it's funded through NSRC
and we're partnering with FPR
and with the Urban and Community Forestry Project.
So I'm super excited to be here
and have this opportunity so early in my new career
at the beginning phase of this project,
and to talk with you all and meet a whole bunch of people.
Today's been really inspiring
to hear all these great talks up on this stage,
I feel a little humbled,
but as I begin in this field,
and it's really great timing,
I guess really, kind of the last talk
of the day in this track.
This is really forward-looking,
so it's the beginning of this project
and I'm really am looking
to get your feedback and your input.
This project is aimed at supporting you all
and helping towns.
So it's thinking about the municipally owned forest lands
and helping to make critical land use decisions,
particularly when we think about Act 59
and 30x30 climate change
and Vermont's, you know, changing population
as we just heard in the previous talk about parcelization
and second homes and all of that.
So this is the really early days of this project.
Hopefully, I'll be invited back next year
to talk more about it when we get further along.
And just to make it a little bit interactive,
keep you on your toes,
a little bit later in the presentation,
it is gonna be kinda quasi-interactive with a mini survey,
which is kind of in lockstep
with what the whole project is about.
So this is the structure of the talk.
Very quickly, just gonna do an introduction
and some background.
Talk a little bit about the census approach,
a little bit more into the methodology,
go through the challenges that we're starting to see,
the products and the significance.
And as I mentioned, your input.
Is that working? Okay, great.
So the enabling legislation
for towns to own forested land was over a century ago,
about 1916 from what I understand.
And since then, we've seen transition from that
being about timber to conservation.
And that movement has been growing in the town forest,
and we think, probably within the last decade,
a couple dozen new town forests.
So I'll talk a little bit more
about understanding that total list.
In 2017, the Vermont Forest Action Plan
spotlighted town forests for their value to the populations
from anything from wellbeing, to watershed,
sustainable forestry and connectivity.
And then during the pandemic, you know,
we all know that gave us a new perspective
on our communal outdoor spaces,
so I think town forests are really important.
So as I mentioned this year with Act 59, 30x30,
so that puts a new focus on conservation,
and we think that town forests
are a really important part of that goal
and that initiative
and the target of getting to 30% conserved.
Note that municipally owned forested land
doesn't necessarily mean that it's formally conserved.
So that's an area of focus.
So I'm gonna talk a little bit about the recent work
that this project is gonna build on.
An important foundational inventory was done in 2009
and it was updated in 2015
by the UVM SAL Spatial Analysis Lab.
And they found that 68,000 acres
are municipally owned forests across 168 cities and towns.
And this is reflected now in the Protected Lands Database
managed by VCGI,
but they found that, so that's a little bit of a misnomer,
but they found that less than 20%
had a formal conservation easement.
So they're sort of implied protected,
but there is a risk for them to be sold or developed.
And then in 2021,
there was a Vermont Town Forest Governance project,
surveys and focus groups to understand who manages
and the challenges that they have with oversight.
And then another important recent work
was the Northern Forest Center
and the University of New Hampshire Extension
inventoried and surveyed their town forests in New Hampshire
in the last couple of years.
So this is a really important body of work
that we're leveraging and understanding
how they executed that.
So we'll build on that, as well.
So we do know that the updated 2015 inventory
of Vermont Town Forest is, you know,
we've been working with those people
and it's likely an under count
and it hasn't been diligently maintained since then,
so this is our opportunity to get that updated.
And then we were gonna launch into a survey,
as well as the inventory,
to just really understand
broader than just the town forest governance issue,
but looking into what the other issues may be.
So I wanna talk about the word census a little bit,
and this is really important,
and then I'll give a fuller sense
of the project phases and components.
But the term census is really key,
because we mean every town and every forest.
And just like the US Census,
this is meant to be replicated
every so many number of years,
and we're thinking about how often that will be.
But you know, thinking about it being a census
means that every other phase of the project we, you know,
we have some ramifications of how to properly set that up
so that it it can be replicated
and that we are reaching out to every single town
and every single town forest.
So as I mentioned,
it's important that we set this up to be repeated,
you know, a baseline,
but then watching trends over time.
And, sorry, I lost my place.
One of the neat things about repeating it is to see
if more lands are getting formally conserved over time
and how that plays out with, you know,
supporting the communities or ecosystem services.
So I'm gonna talk a little bit more
about the team in the next slide,
but developing a diverse team has been really important
across the state,
as well as across a lot of different disciplines
and expertise.
So we spend a lot of time developing a team.
And then when we think about inventory,
so this is another phase that we're just starting on,
which is building a whole new list
and the mapping of the town forests.
And again, like I said,
we have to think about how this is gonna be set up
to be maintained and used in the future.
So the survey is gonna go out to all the towns,
and I'll talk a little bit more about the methodology
and some of the challenges with that,
and then the economics.
So the field of ecosystem services
has really been exploding over the last couple of decades,
and we really wanna do a full assessment,
economic assessment in ecosystem services,
to get a really good baseline, not just the typical numbers,
you know, and monetary values that we look at,
but also starting to think
about cultural ecosystem services
that I think we've talked a lot about today.
So I mentioned a minute ago about building a diverse team,
and so on the left, you'll see this as the core team
that came up with this project
and sought the funding for it.
And then very quickly,
we realized we needed an Advisory Committee.
So I'll say that I haven't had the opportunity
to meet everybody that you're gonna see
populate on this slide,
but I'm hoping to meet a bunch of these people today
and I've met them virtually.
So we've got this Advisory Committee,
as well as a bunch of consultants.
And the importance is,
what I wanna point out here
is that we really have been reaching out
to try to get a lot of different voices and expertise
across the state, local level, state-level agencies,
public, private sector,
rural voices, urban voices, Indigenous leaders,
ecologists, foresters, you know, you name it.
And so I'm really, really honored
to be working with these people
and they're already giving us a lot of input.
I will also say that we are missing a critical role,
which maybe somebody in the room can fill this role,
which is somebody who represents the town forest,
somebody who is on a conservation commission.
We're really looking for that person
who would be the person who would complete our survey.
And particularly, we're looking for voices
in the more rural areas of Vermont.
So going a little bit deeper into the methodology
that I touched on our different components of our project.
So building our universe has become our term
for how we're gonna create this list
of everything that's in scope,
everything that's classified as a town forest.
And that definition, you know,
wasn't necessarily all that straightforward.
So we have figured out, you know,
what we're considering in scope,
and then how we go after, you know,
really mapping all of that
and getting all of the partial information.
So we have a GIS expert on our team, Dr. Laura Edling,
who has already started to focus on this
and really, really excited to, you know,
work with some people who've done this previously
and build a new list from the ground up
so that we make sure that it's accurate and thorough.
And that's really the point of a census, right?
It's just to make sure that we've got the whole scope of it.
So finding the voices.
So I mentioned, you know,
the work we've put into building
the Advisory Committee list team,
but then another phase is gonna be making sure
that we've got the voices of the people
who are gonna answer our survey, you know,
and so that list of people is, you know,
is gonna be ever-changing
and there isn't one place to go to for that list.
So really using our networks
and finding the people who can support this project
and work with us on this survey.
And we want it to be a two-way street.
So we wanna find these people and help them understand
that we're getting all this information
so that we can understand what town forests
look like across the state
and we can also enable, you know, pushing out resources
and matching people together
and peer learning between the towns, as well.
So asking and listening refers
to actually developing the survey.
And that's ongoing right now
and we've had some really great input
from our Advisory Committee already on,
whoa, three minutes, on what the survey looks like.
So we just need to really balance it with,
you know, a thorough survey,
but something that can be easily completed.
So in the interest of time,
I'm gonna move a little bit faster.
Valuing the benefits is really just talking
about the economic assessment
and just trying to think of ways, you know,
not just market-driven and monetary ways,
but you know, thinking about all the ecosystem services
and how to capture that.
So this is just a really quick slide
on an idea of the survey topics.
This is not an exhaustive list
and this is a work in progress right now,
but you know, we're interested in feedback
from everybody of, you know,
are these the right topics to be talking to towns
about the issues with their town forests.
So we're excited to get feedback on that today.
So I've touched on a couple of the challenges,
and again, I'm starting to run a little bit short on time,
so, you know, just to recap a little bit, you know,
we're interested in getting a complete list
of all the town forests across the state.
We really have to think about the survey
is going to the towns
and they're answering at the town level
or if they're answering for each individual forest.
So that's a concern that we're looking at,
making sure that the survey is completed by every town.
That's 100%, that's the census goal,
as I mentioned, you know,
how we value cultural ecosystem services,
benefits from nature,
and then really making sure
that we're gonna share this really widely,
because you know, it's important that we do this work
and then we get it all back out there.
And then as I said, you know,
making sure that this is gonna endure over time,
that it's not just a one-shot deal
that we're setting something up that can be replicated.
Oh, I missed, so this is the QR code,
so this is where you all come in, a little interactive.
If you don't wanna use your phones and the QR code,
I do actually have a few paper copies, as well.
And so it's a very, very simple survey
and the first question really
just helps you understand like,
that question could be asked a few different ways.
I've asked it in that survey of, you know,
tell me your top three,
but it could be a rank order of all of those
or it could be a Likert,
and these are some of the challenges that we're facing
and that we're working with our Advisory Committee on.
You can imagine all those survey topics
that I mentioned in the previous slide,
and we have to go through each one of those
and think about the best way to ask the question
so that we get the answers and the data
that will be helpful to everyone.
So if you wanna take that quick survey,
it only takes one minute,
and we've got a break right after this,
so it's perfect timing.
And if you wanna be involved
or you wanna just stay in the know about what we're doing,
there's an opportunity for you to sign up
for an email list there.
So really encourage that
and hoping to get input
so that we can make this a better project
based on what everybody's telling us is needed.
Here's the products
that hopefully I'll come back to you all in a year with,
a lot of great information about what we have found.
How am I doing on time?
[Employee] You have time for questions.
Okay, and that's just a run through of the significance,
hopefully I've touched on that.
Thank you very much.
This was a great opportunity
so early in my career to present,
I really appreciate it.
(crowd applauding)
Questions, I will try my best.
Oh, good. Oh, one.
[Attendee] Just one.
So my understanding is this is like the first sentence
of understanding all of the town-owned forests in the state.
[Presenter] That's right.
[Attendee] We really don't have a handle on it.
There was a previous survey that was done,
it didn't necessarily reach every town
and it was focused on the governance structures
of town forests, and this is a little bit broader look,
yeah.
Thanks for the clarifying question.
Yes?
[Attendee] Can you elaborate on why it's so tricky
to get down the definition of a town forest?
'Cause on the outside, it seems like (indistinct).
Yeah, that's a great question.
I will attempt to answer that,
and Cecilia, if you wanna weigh in, please feel free.
So sometimes towns actually don't even know
that they own some forested land, that's one thing.
It could be a town forest that like, has a nice label
and it's, you know, got a parking lot and it's got trails
and everybody recognizes it as a town forest.
But there can also be town forests that are landlocked
and nobody really knows that it's there.
It can be the perception
of whether it's conserved or not conserved.
There are water districts and school districts
and tribal town forests, as well.
So we really had to think about all of those
and decide, you know,
what is our definition of our universe.
Anything to add?
All right, thank you all so much, appreciate it.
(crowd applauding)