Projects

In 2008, MDC developed a printed survey asking horse riders how often they rode on public land, where they rode, how much they spent, and additional questions about their attitudes regarding equestrian trails. The survey was printed in two versions. One was sent to a randomly selected sample of riders, the other was a convenience sample distributed to saddle clubs, trail rides, and other interested parties. The Random Sample was to provide unbiased statewide information, while the Convenience Sample was to meet the desire of the riding public to provide input.

A convenience sample is much more likely to be completed by avid users, who have more opportunities to see it, and by users with stronger opinions about the issue addressed, who are more motivated. A random sample should statistically represent the whole population from which the sample is drawn, in this case all Missouri landowners with horses. With a convenience sample, it may never be known how many people received it, only how many were sent in. By contrast, with a well-constructed random sample, which includes a database of names and addresses and numbered surveys, the response rate is known.

Missouri Department of Conservation’s (MDC) Community Forestry Program advises, coordinates and facilitates the efforts that affect Missouri’s community-owned trees. Assistance provided by MDC is targeted at local governments, arborists, non-profit organizations and planning councils. To better understand the knowledge, motivation and behavior of community forestry officials, a survey was mailed to employees in 612 Missouri communities. Our goal was to characterize the local agencies charged with managing urban trees, their budgets and personnel levels, and to determine which urban forestry issues local officials found to be most pressing.

In 2011 MDC conducted surveys of three groups involved in community forestry: local elected officials (broken down into mayors, council members, etc.), local heads of city departments and urban foresters. The questions in these three surveys were similar to a 2003 MDC survey. All surveys included questions such as which community department was responsible for street tree management, size of budget, and what sources of funds were used. Questions also were included on department size and the educational background of its employees, as well as on equipment, local tree ordinances and familiarity with potential sources of outside money and advice. There were also several sets of questions asking respondents to rank their attitudes towards certain community forestry issues, such as hazard trees, topping, urban sprawl and adequacy of funding and tree maintenance and planting. Slightly different sets of questions were developed for the three groups. The response rates ranged from 21% to 80%, depending on the type of survey and group.

Interest and participation in EcoHealth and One Health approaches have grown considerably over the past decade. We present our deliberations and insights on two questions: Where and how can the two concepts converge? What is their common ground and where can they live happily apart?

Adults and children are spending more time interacting with media and technology and less time participating in activities in nature. This life-style change clearly has ramifications for our physical well-being, but what impact does this change have on cognition? Higher order cognitive functions including selective attention, problem solving, inhibition, and multi-tasking are all heavily utilized in our modern technology-rich society. Attention Restoration Theory (ART) suggests that exposure to nature can restore prefrontal cortex-mediated executive processes such as these. Consistent with ART, research indicates that exposure to natural settings seems to replenish some, lower-level modules of the executive attentional system. However, the impact of nature on higher-level tasks such as creative problem solving has not been explored. Here we show that four days of immersion in nature, and the corresponding disconnection from multi-media and technology, increases performance on a creativity, problem-solving task by a full 50% in a group of naive hikers. Our results demonstrate that there is a cognitive advantage to be realized if we spend time immersed in a natural setting. We anticipate that this advantage comes from an increase in exposure to natural stimuli that are both emotionally positive and low-arousing and a corresponding decrease in exposure to attention demanding technology, which regularly requires that we attend to sudden events, switch amongst tasks, maintain task goals, and inhibit irrelevant actions or cognitions. A limitation of the current research is the inability to determine if the effects are due to an increased exposure to nature, a decreased exposure to technology, or to other factors associated with spending three days immersed in nature.

Here we show that four days of immersion in nature, and the corresponding disconnection from multi-media and technology, increases performance on a creativity, problem-solving task by a full 50% in a group of naïve hikers.

Information gathered in this study provides MDC decision makers, O&E “marketers”, area staff as well as local political and business leaders with baseline estimates of how many people are going to see (or try to see) elk at MDC’s Elk Tour Loops. It helps us understand what this new tourism is doing for the local economy, and for the visitors themselves. Local governments can use the information to encourage further investments in tourism infrastructure and in designing marketing campaigns. Follow-up studies can then gauge the effectiveness of their campaigns. MDC can use the information to help garner support for elk restoration outside of our usual constituency and will serve as a baseline when measuring the economic impacts of elk hunting should a season be implemented.

Form to record new bald eagle nest locations.

Registration form to be filled out by those wanting to participate in the Eagle Watch Program.