Gila National Forest Plan Revision: 2016 Q-methodology data on public and manager perspectives of ecosystem services and drivers of change

In June of 2016, data were collected from both the interested public (122 people over the course of five public meetings) and public land managers (50 managers from the forest and district level) on the Gila National Forest, southwestern New Mexico. The data includes a ‘Q-sort’ of ecosystem services, whereby 30 benefits (e.g., timber production, water quality, motorized recreation) provided by the Gila National Forest were sorted on a scale of less important to more important. Following this sorting exercise, participants completed a ‘drivers of change’ exercise, where they selected up to three things they felt would influence the ecosystem services most important to them. Also included are demographic characteristics provided by participants (e.g., self-description, age, length of connection with Gila National Forest, county of residence).
The data collected during this public engagement process was done in support of the Gila National Forest’s Plan Revision of their outdated National Forest Plan. The public input was analyzed and provided to the managers in a full report, and it constituted a scientifically rigorous public engagement activity. The intent of this work, framed within the literature as a ‘social vulnerability assessment’, provided managers with an understanding of human-nature relationships and the threats to those relationships. Additionally, this research was completed, in part, to inform a ‘social vulnerability’ protocol for the purpose of providing other National Forest planning teams (e.g., Forest Plan Revision, Comprehensive River Management Planning, finer scale restoration projects) with a tool to engage the public with a social science approach. The land manager input was collected for advancing the literature surrounding transactive planning and collaborative governance.