The Geography of Proliferating Conservation Easements

保护地役权激增的地理

• 批准号: 1068906
• 负责人: Caitlin Dyckman
• 金额: $ 6.68万
• 依托单位: Clemson University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-03-01 至 2014-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1068906&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Geography; Proliferating; Conservation; Easements

The purpose of this research project is to study the geography of exurban conservation easements adjacent to rapidly urbanizing areas of the United States. More specifically, the team will examine the locations of easement abundance and the reasons for the geographical variation in expression, in order to expose the causal relationships between governmental and individual decisions that stimulate this propagation. Conservation easements, a direct manifestation of economic precepts in geography and urban planning, have proliferated over the past thirty years in exurban areas adjacent to rapidly urbanizing areas. Their popularity may correspond to federal and state tax laws creating incentives for private land conservation in the public interest. However beneficial as a land preservation tool, cumulative private easement decisions are directly affecting public land use options, arguably without public input. After amassing a database of exurban easement characteristics and other political and legal factors in two rapidly urbanizing counties with high easement acreage in the pilot states of California and Colorado, the team expects to reveal the geographical variation in their location using spatial analysis techniques (e.g. cluster analysis, "hot spot" analysis, and spatial autocorrelation). The team will examine how public input during the easement process affected that spatial expression at both the state and county levels. The team also will assess the neighborhood effects of conservation easements on adjacent and county-level land costs, using multiple methodologies. Employing multivariate analysis, the team will examine the relationship between political and legal factors (at the federal, state, and local levels) and the easement proliferation. The findings from the pilot study will lead to replication of the methodology in regionally representative states around the country. This project will have significant theoretical and practical implications, the most important of which is social equity. Although beneficial, conservation easements promote public subsidy of generally private actions with limited public oversight, little (if any) public access to the private land, relatively minimal enforcement, and other potential abuses (e.g. questionable valuation or land cost inflation). The results of this project should reveal a spatial effect from public input in the conservation easement conveyance process to both confirm and challenge existing theories about public oversight, ecologic value of the easement lands, and the social factors promoting and economic effect of conservation use. There are multiple broader impacts from the findings of this research, including implications for the tax law amendments at the federal and state levels, particularly for states that are just starting to embark on land preservation e.g. parts of the Southeast.

本研究项目的目的是研究毗邻美国快速城市化地区的远郊保护地役权的地理。 更具体地说，该小组将研究地役权丰富的位置和表达的地理差异的原因，以揭示刺激这种传播的政府和个人决策之间的因果关系。保护地役权是地理学和城市规划中经济规则的直接体现，在过去三十年中，在毗邻快速城市化地区的远郊地区激增。它们的受欢迎程度可能与联邦和州的税法相对应，这些税法为私人土地保护创造了公共利益激励。无论作为一种土地保护工具多么有益，累积的私人地役权决定都直接影响着公共土地使用的选择，可以说没有公共投入。在积累了一个数据库的远郊地役权的特点和其他政治和法律的因素，在两个快速城市化的县，在加州和科罗拉多试点州的高地役权面积，该小组希望揭示地理变化，在其位置使用空间分析技术（如聚类分析，“热点”分析，和空间自相关）。该小组将研究在地役权过程中公众的投入如何影响州和县一级的空间表达。该小组还将使用多种方法评估保护地役权对邻近和县级土地成本的邻里影响。运用多变量分析，该小组将研究政治和法律的因素（在联邦，州和地方各级）和地役权扩散之间的关系。试点研究的结果将导致在全国各地具有区域代表性的州推广这一方法。该项目将具有重要的理论和实践意义，其中最重要的是社会公平。虽然保护地役权是有益的，但它促进了公共对一般私人行为的补贴，而公共监督有限，很少（如果有的话）公众可以进入私人土地，相对最低限度的执法，以及其他潜在的滥用（例如可疑的估值或土地成本膨胀）。本研究的结果将揭示保护地役权转让过程中公众投入的空间效应，以证实和挑战现有的关于公众监督、地役权土地的生态价值、保护利用的社会因素促进和经济效应的理论。这项研究的结果产生了多个更广泛的影响，包括对联邦和州一级税法修正案的影响，特别是对那些刚刚开始进行土地保护的州，例如东南部的部分地区。