County data related to forest dependence and community capitals, 2014-2019

This data publication includes a compilation of publicly-available county-level data on indicators relating to forest-dependence and community capitals for all states in the United States, including the District of Columbia from 2014-2019. A community’s forest-dependence is defined by its spatial, economic, and cultural relationship with the forest. Community capitals are assets or resources that can be employed to develop communities that are economically, environmentally, and socially sustainable. Together, these data provide information on the extent to which communities that depend on forests for their well-being, livelihoods, quality of life, or cultural identity are able to respond and adapt to social and economic change. The variables were selected because they allow wall-to-wall geographic coverage and come from consistent public sources with a historical track record, which should enable reporting on the health of forest-dependent counties and trends over time. Data include, but are not limited to: location information, various population and education metrics, employment and earnings data for the forest sector and all sectors, forest area, land and water area, percent of forest land used, internet availability, and employment. Also included are identifiers for counties meeting three different forest dependence criterions: spatial relationship, economic dependence, and cultural connection.
These data were compiled primarily for the purpose of reporting Indicator 6.38: "Resilience of forest-dependent communities" within the U.S. National Report on Sustainable Forests (McGinley et al. 2023), which is part of the U.S. commitment to reporting on forest conditions under the Montreal Process.
For more information about these data see Frey et al. (2021). This data publication was originally published on 02/14/2022. On 01/04/2023 and 06/10/2024, minor metadata updates were made which included providing additional information for variables as well as updates to citations and website URLs.