Landowner Functional Types to Characterize Response to Forest Insects

Forest insects and pathogens (FIPs) play an important role in the complex interactions between woodland owners and the ecosystems they manage. Understanding the specifics of woodland owner decision-making with regard to trees impacted by FIPs can facilitate projections of future forest conditions and insect spread. Our first objective is to: (i) characterize agent functional types (AFTs) of New England family forest owners (FFOs) using a set of contingent behavior questions contained in a mail survey of FFOs concerning response to FIPs. We establish AFTs as a form of dimension reduction, effectively assigning individual FFOs to particular decision-making classes, each with distinct probabilities of behavior with respect to the harvest of impacted trees. Our second objective is to: (ii) model AFT membership to predict the distribution of AFTs across the landscape. Predictors are chosen from a set of survey, geographic, and demographic features. Accomplishing (i) establishes three functional classes of landowners: cutters (46% of respondents; highly likely to cut timber impacted by FIPs), responsive cutters (42% of respondents; sensitive to pest severity), and non-cutters (12% of respondents; highly unlikely to cut). Fulfilling (ii) provides a high-resolution probability surface of AFTs across the landscape, delivering key input for simulation models of forest and land cover change in New England. Predictors in our best model of AFT membership include parcel size (hectares of forest), region, and town-level forested fraction.