Dissertation Research: Household Ecology of Family Ranchers in the Eastern Sierras

该地区的恶化，包括荒漠化、非水源水污染和生物多样性的丧失，是美国西部最紧迫的环境问题之一。 虽然大量的牧场造成了环境退化，但许多牧场主努力确保保护。 在适当的条件下，家庭牧场主可以作为有效的牧场管理者，保护开放空间和农业景观。 目前，导致养护而不是管理不善的条件还没有得到很好的理解，对如何通过家庭牧场上的家庭行动执行政策也知之甚少。 本论文项目，由文化人类学的研究生进行，将寻求了解当前的土地管理过程中，多个经济变量和牧场主的土地传统知识转化为家庭行动。 该项目将提供一个家庭决策过程的模型，产生观察到的范围管理战略，影响环境的可持续性，在东部山区走廊的加州。 每年，塞拉利昂东部的家庭牧场主必须利用他们对土地、经济、政治和牲畜的了解，制定牧场管理战略，在经济上为家庭提供资金，同时确保牧场的稳定性和连续性。 使用牧场社区的参与者观察，结构化的深入和家族史访谈，环境状况调查，决策过程建模和替代范围管理策略的简单模型的开发相结合，学生将确定家庭牧场主如何理解多种经济和生态约束，并通过范围管理实践进行谈判，促进对牧场管理及其环境和社会影响的多方面理解。更广泛的影响：除了有助于博士生的教育，这项研究将提供促进家庭牧场经济稳定和环境可持续性的必要因素的模型，以及家庭牧场如何通过资源管理实践在当地实施政府政策的模型。 这一新的知识将是重要的规划者寻求更有效的政策，有关牧场土地管理和保护。

The deterioration of the range, including desertification, non-source water pollution, and loss of biodiversity, is one of the most urgent environmental issues in the western United States. While significant numbers of ranches contribute to environmental degradation, many ranchers work to ensure conservation. Under the right conditions, family ranchers can serve as effective range managers, preserving open space and the working agricultural landscape. Currently, the conditions that lead to conservation rather than mismanagement are not well understood and little is known about how policy is implemented through the actions of households on family ranches. This dissertation project, conducted by a graduate student of cultural anthropology, will seek to understand current processes of land management in which multiple economic variables and ranchers' traditional knowledge of the land are transformed into household actions. The project will provide a model of household decision-making processes that produce the observed range management strategies that impact environmental sustainability in the Eastern Sierra corridor of California. Each year, family ranchers in the Eastern Sierra must use their knowledge of the land, economy, politics, and livestock to devise range management strategies that will provide for the household economically and yet also ensure stability and continuity of the ranch. Using a combination of participant observation in ranching communities, structured in-depth and family history interviews, environmental status surveys, decision-making process modeling and the development of simple models of alternative range management strategies, the student will determine how multiple economic and ecological constraints are understood by family ranchers and negotiated through range management practices, contributing a multifaceted understanding of range management and its environmental and social effects. Broader Impact: Aside from contributing to the education of a doctoral student, this research will provide a model of the necessary factors promoting family ranch economic stability and environmental sustainability, as well as a model of how family ranches implement government policy on-the-ground through resource management practices. This new knowledge will be important to planners seeking more effective policies concerning range land management and conservation.