Download or read book Community Response to Forest Disturbance on Alaska's Kenai Peninsula written by Courtney G. Flint and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A spruce bark beetle infestation on Alaska's Kenai Peninsula killed nearly a million and a half acres of trees. Variation in response by local communities frustrated forest managers. This study is an evaluation of risk perception and community action in response to this forest disturbance. Community theory was brought to the areas of natural resource sociology, forest management, disaster research, and risks research to build a conceptual model of community action in response to risk. This model represents the relationship among local vulnerabilities, perceptions, and capacities in the face of environmental disturbance and risk. Mixed methodological approaches were incorporated into this study. Secondary data analysis of forestry data, US Census data, newspaper archives, and local histories were used to understand the context of the Kenai Peninsula and aided the selection of six study communities. Qualitative key informant interviews with 115 individuals who were representative of their communities were used to appreciate the range of variation in constructs from the conceptual model. The interview data was used to construct a mail survey which was sent to 2,470 households to assess individual and community response to forest disturbance and provide data for statistical analysis.;This research yielded four general conclusions: (1) communities varied substantially in their response to forest risks associated with the spruce bark beetle outbreak and in the array of factors influencing community action; (2) local interactional capacity, or the ability to work together in the interest of community, strongly influenced community action in response to forest risks across all communities; (3) indirect risks, or threats to broader ecological and community well-being, accounted for more of the variation in community action than direct risk perceptions, or immediate threats to personal property or safety; and (4) the conceptual model of community action and community risk perception was generally supported by the data, but individual Kenai Peninsula community models varied substantially. Implications of these findings for forest management and policy are discussed"--P. iii