Thomas M Beckley

• PhD University of Wisconsin-Madison, Sociology
• Professor at University of New Brunswick

Forests contain substantial carbon stores, including above and belowground biomass and living and non-living biomass. Different management regimes produce different outcomes related to stored and sequestered carbon in forests. The geographic focus of this study is the Wabanaki-Acadian Forest of the Maritime Provinces of Canada (New Brunswick, Nova...

The New England – Acadian Forest (NEAF) is an ecoregion spanning 24 million hectares of the northeastern United States and eastern Canada. The region is characterized as a transitional forest naturally composed of both boreal and temperate species. The term “borealization” is sometimes used to describe various processes driving the NEAF toward a mo...

In 2013, the state-owned electrical energy utility in New Brunswick, Canada, announced that a problem with concrete expansion was shortening by 40 years the expected life of the 660 MW Mactaquac Generating Station on the Saint John River. Its construction late in the 1960s, and the subsequent inundation of 10,000 hectares (ha) was part of a regiona...

Understanding how urban nature is important to the public can broaden management objectives and give citizens a say in how nature is managed in the places where they live. However, studies on the topic do not usually integrate multiple research methods: and case studies, or have an opportunity to reflect on an understanding of the value-elicitation...

Research examining the relationship between trust, public engagement, and natural resource management asserts that trust fosters positive behavior and enhanced cooperation. Yet some scholars are finding that certain kinds of distrust are helpful in achieving democratic outcomes by providing would-be participants with the motivation to engage in iss...

Energy is the lifeblood of any society. It drives a society's material culture and the reproduction of that culture. It is essential for the production of food, shelter, clothing, and for transportation, trade and communication. This paper makes the case for a rural sociology of energy. Relative to the impact that energy issues have for rural place...

Hydroelectricity is an old yet reliable form of renewable energy, with acknowledged social and ecological impacts. A tension currently exists between such concerns and energy needs, with dam construction and removal ongoing around the world. It is critical to better understand the implications of both on local citizens. We performed map elicitation...

In the fall of 2014 our research team conducted a national survey on energy literacy and energy citizenship in Canada (Comeau et al. 2015). That survey included questions covering: • energy knowledge (self-assessed and tested), engagement and activity; • exposure, support and opposition to various energy sources; and, • personal values, beliefs,...

30 May –4 June, 2016

Landscape impacts are commonly cited as barriers to new energy infrastructure, but rarely are perceptions of such impacts monitored over time. Built in the mid-1960s, the Mactaquac hydroelectric generating station in New Brunswick, Canada, is degrading, and its future is under review. We took locals on houseboats to learn how they felt about the da...

With the majority of Canada's population concentrated in cities, it is important to determine what people consider important in urban nature. The concept of values can help illustrate what people consider important in urban nature beyond utilitarian considerations. This is the case for urban forests. However, many studies about public opinion on ur...

This questionnaire was used to gauge energy literacy and energy citizenship in Canada with 3,000 survey participants in the Fall of 2014. Questionnaire topics include knowledge of the energy system, preferences for energy sources, views on current and future energy use, engagement on energy issues, values related to energy development, trust in sou...

This national survey explores public perspectives on energy issues in Canada with a focus on preferences for energy sources, perceived and actual knowledge of energy systems, trust in energy-related organizations and sources of knowledge about energy issues. The survey also explores willingness to engage in energy related issues and general values...

Drawing inspiration from the literature on social imaginaries and cultural models, this study explores contending perspectives on energy and sustainability, moving beyond a simplistic understanding of support or opposition to specific energy developments. With a comparative study in three regions of Canada, we use Q methodology to identify five key...

Beckley, T.; Duinker, P.N.; Sinclair, J.; Ordóñez, C., Kekacs, A.; Cushing, S.; Diduck, J.; Owen, R. (2014) Talking about the trees among the trees: in-situ methods for forest-values elicitation. Presentation. International Symposium on Society and Resource Management (ISSRM2014) (International), 9th -13th of June, 2014, Hannover, Germany.

The governments of countries that allow private land ownership have two main tools to motivate landowner behavior: regulations and incentives. This research examines landowner preferences toward these policy tools and asks specifically: Do private forest landowners in New Brunswick and Maine believe that regulations and/or incentives are effective...

Canadian Urban Forest Research Group (CUFRG)

The province of New Brunswick (NB), Canada and the state of Maine (ME), USA are heavily forested jurisdictions whose forests provide many social, ecological, and economic functions. Roughly a third of NB and ME’s forested land is owned by private, non-industrial owners [sometimes called family forests or woodlot owners]. The choices of thousands of...

Sustainable management of natural ecosystems requires adequate participation of Aboriginal people. This especially includes the joint use of local ecological and scientific knowledge to document natural processes and develop management guidelines. Despite increasing recognition of this principle, endorsed by the international community and several...

Classifying communities as forest dependent based on economic indicators implies that residents of these communities share a utilitarian view of forest management whereby resource extraction and economic benefits are the primary focus. In this study, we test this hypothesis by examining the relationship between forest dependency, value orientation,...

Worldwide, studies have shown increases in environmental values and beliefs over the past four decades. However, in few cases have researchers observed parallel increases in environmentally-supportive behaviour (ESB). In fact, the gap between environmental values and ESB is of growing concern for both academics and practitioners. We explored 'the e...

Abstract Rural sociologists have a lengthy history of examining the relationship between natural resource dependence and community well-being. This paper contributes to the understanding of this relationship in several ways. First, census data were used to describe forest sector dependence in two Canadian provinces where levels of dependence were m...

Abstract Local control of natural resource processing facilities in small rural communities is often viewed as beneficial to community development. This paper employs social impact assessment tools to examine the social and economic effects of change in the ownership of forest products mills in two communities. Our analysis documents (1) the degree...

Abstract Distinctions between rural and urban populations are well documented in environmental sociology literature. Rural and urban places may exert different influences on participation in environmentally supportive behavior (ESB) as well as on other forms of environmental concern (EC). The influence of these distinct geographies may be due to pr...

Social values issues are becoming increasingly prominent in discussions of forest management and forest policy. This represents an evolution in thinking from the time, only a few decades ago, when a majority believed that virtually all resource management problems had technical, science-based solutions. This article first describes the ascendance o...

Old-growth forests have declined significantly across the world. Decisions related to old growth are often mired in challenges of value diversity, conflict, data gaps, and resource pressures. This article describes old-growth values of citizens and groups in Nova Scotia, Canada, for integration in sustainable forest management (SFM) decision-making...

This paper is a conceptual review paper that explores the meaning of community, the meaning of sustainability and the links between these terms. The subject is located in the interdisciplinary space between sociology, forest management and the multidisciplinary literature on sustainability. The paper examines how the use of the term sustainability...

Sense-of-place research has grown in recent years and has attracted interest from a diverse range of disciplines. Beckley (20031. Beckley , T. M. 2003 . The relative importance of sociocultural and ecological factors in attachment to place . In Understanding community-forest relations , ed. L. Kruger , 105 – 126 . USDA Forest Service General Techni...

New Brunswick is in the midst of a forest policy debate regarding wood supply. This paper outlines the historical context, presents recent data and provides a detailed update on policy activities related to this debate. In 2004, the bi-partisan Legislative Select Committee on Wood Supply produced a report complete with recommendations for action. W...

Abstract  Collectively, current resource-development literature has given little attention to organizational features of ownership as important variables in community resilience. By drawing from six local buyout cases in Canada's forest sector, we reveal the complexity and numerous constraints on local ownership and expose a more nuanced context th...

This research examines self-provisioning activities in rural Canada and describes their prevalence both in terms of participation and the degree to which they make material contributions to households. Self-provisioning is correlated with a number of household characteristics, such as employment, income, and length of residency. Results show that s...

The forest products sector is a major employer in much of rural Canada, and it is often assumed by policy makers that increased timber harvest is a viable means of rural economic development. Despite burgeoning research in the United States, relatively little attention has focused on the relationship between forest dependence and well-being in rura...

Research on attachment to high amenity places has usually focused on visitors, despite the fact that many of these settings also may hold permanent residents. Visitor employed photography (VEP) has been used to understand landscape elements that increase the quality of the recreational experience. Our research applies the techniques of VEP to analy...

Abstract The well-being of residents of resource dependent communities is a question of traditional interest to rural sociologists. The label “resource dependent” obscures how this relationship may vary between particular resource industries, regions, or indicators of well-being. Few analyses have compared the relationship between well-being and re...

Although community capacity is widely discussed in policy circles, the links between academic work on the subject and practical applications remain weak. This paper describes a high-generality conceptual model that represents a novel approach to depicting and articulating the concept of community capacity. The model describes four dimensions to com...

Places have long served as the backdrop for the study of social relations. Yet, studying the relations and interactions between people and places themselves expands our perspective on this basic concept. Although some studies have explored the complexity of place attachment, few have attempted to discern to what qualities or attributes of place peo...

This paper describes the evolution of research on socio-economic indicators of community sustainability in several Canadian Model Forest locations since 1994. In the Foothills and Western Newfoundland Model Forests, we employed an "expert-driven" approach to indicator selection and reporting. We used census data to document change over time on key...

Local control of natural resource processing facilities in small rural communities is often viewed as beneficial to community development. This paper employs social impact assessment tools to examine the social and economic effects of change in the ownership of forest products mills in two communities. Our analysis documents (1) the degree to which...

Social, political and economic conditions are changing in rural Canada. The forest industry has operated in rural communities throughout the nation for several centuries and the relationships between forest companies and communities have evolved over that time. This paper outlines a model for company-community relations that will foster sustainable...

Research on forest management in North America has traditionally focussed on large, industrial forest tenures (involving both public and private land), or small, private woodlot management. Recent discussion and experiments in Canada involve new institutions for forest management. These alternative forest management systems - namely, co-managed for...

Economic base analysis is a limited but useful tool for measuring forest dependence. It cannot measure the full range of forest values (e.g., subsistence, amenity, bequest, and existence values). However, economic base analysis utilizes widely available census data to provide accurate measures of communities dependent on industrial forest activity....

Previous research on forest dependence has been limited by (1) an incomplete treatment of the topic (an overemphasis of timber dependence) and (2) careless specification of inferences based on data employed. This article presents a conceptual framework for understanding the nested nature afforest dependence, and demonstrates how forest dependence c...

This article examines issues surrounding the potential applicability of nonmarket valuation techniques to indigenous peoples. A conceptual model examines relationships between natural and cultural environments and value systems. Problems of valuation identified include eliciting values for individuals, aggregating individual values into measures of...

Forest-dependent communities are often isolated geographically and culturally but linked politically and economically to industrial core areas. Theories of underdevelopment and resource-dependence, and theories of community power are used to explain the implications of forest-dependence for the structure of local politics in one Maine paper mill to...

Sociology has made only minor contributions to forest management and policy in the past. Changes in the dominant paradigm of forest management have opened a window of opportunity for practical applications of sociology in a forestry context. Sociological analyses of stakeholder values, social movements, conflict and its resolution, poverty in fores...

Current non-market valuation techniques have been developed based on assumptions about values held within the Eurocentred culture. Contentions between cultures over natural resources are hypothesized to occur because of differences in held values resulting in different values being assigned to the resources in question. This study measured the held...

This paper addresses the ownership and control of farmland, presents a conceptual model of landed property, and uses it to examine landlord-tenant relations in Wisconsin. A profile of farmland owners is constructed using survey data from two agricultural counties. Particular attention is paid to who controls farm management decisions on rented land...

The quiet revolution in land-use control has been debated among planners and legal scholars since its inception in the 1960s. The debate has consisted of attacks on centralized land-use regulation from the right, and defenses by liberal reformers. A third, but oft ignored, position in the debate is presented by leftist political economists. Authors...

This report provides a description and summary of tools for public participation in forest management. It is intended as a menu or quick reference guide for strategic and operational forest managers and planners, to help them consider the strengths and weaknesses of various tools as they develop a public participation program. Specific public parti...