(Not) Counting Trees

Sustainable bioenergy derived from cellulosic biomass offers the potential to create new market and diversification opportunities for Wisconsin farmers, woodland owners, and their local communities. However, achieving sustainable biomass supply within Wisconsin’s mixed-use landscapes that include both agriculture and forest systems will require some degree of coordination across their strikingly different and traditionally isolated stakeholder networks.

Forests and their management are one of the most intriguing examples of the interconnectedness of social and natural resource systems—particularly those in private landownership. Central to understanding and managing these systems is how private forest landowners make decisions in their local social and ecological context. The purpose of this study is to investigate the egocentric networks of landowners in individual and collective decision-making related to two practices: timber harvesting and invasive species removal.