The Geography of Proliferating Conservation Easements

这项研究项目的目的是研究美国快速城市化地区附近的郊区保护地役权的地理位置。更具体地说，该团队将研究地役权丰富的地点和表达方式地理差异的原因，以揭示刺激这种传播的政府和个人决定之间的因果关系。保护地役权是地理和城市规划中经济法则的直接体现，在过去30年里，在毗邻快速城市化地区的郊区激增。它们的受欢迎程度可能对应于联邦和州税法，为公共利益创造了鼓励私人土地保护的激励措施。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正在直接影响公共土地使用选择，可以说是没有公众参与的。在积累了加州和科罗拉多州试点州两个快速城市化、地役权面积较高的县的城郊地役权特征和其他政治和法律因素的数据库后，研究小组希望利用空间分析技术(例如，集群分析、热点分析和空间自相关)揭示其位置的地理变化。该小组将研究地役权过程中的公众投入如何影响州和县两级的空间表达。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社区影响。利用多元分析，该小组将研究政治和法律因素(在联邦、州和地方层面)与地役权扩散之间的关系。试点研究的结果将导致在全国具有区域代表性的州复制这一方法。这个项目将具有重大的理论和实践意义，其中最重要的是社会公平。虽然保育地役权是有益的，但它促进了对一般私人行为的公共补贴，但公众监督有限，几乎没有(如果有的话)公众获得私人土地，相对最少的执法，以及其他潜在的滥用(例如，有问题的估值或土地成本通胀)。这一项目的结果将揭示公众在保护地役权转让过程中的投入的空间效应，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、促进保护性使用的社会因素和经济效应的理论。这项研究的结果有多个更广泛的影响，包括对联邦和州一级的税法修正案的影响，特别是对刚刚开始着手土地保护的州，例如东南部的部分地区。

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.