Project Summary:
Our objective is to prepare and administer a survey to stakeholders, including policy decision makers, within the Pocatello, Idaho region. The survey will focus on ecosystem services related to the Portneuf River. The survey is two-fold, including both traditional style survey questions that will address demographic data, attitudes and beliefs, and citizenship perspectives and visitor experience photography (stakeholders will be asked to photograph features, places, or activities that are most notable to them). This work will allow us preliminary data for future EPSCoR MILES work by identifying stakeholder groups, providing baseline data on stakeholder group demographics, attitudes and beliefs concerning ecosystem services, and citizenship perspectives. In addition it will provide insight into what people (literally) view as notable via photographs. These photographs, along with the historic photographs provided to stakeholder groups will then also be linked to a series of thematic Geographic Information Systems (GIS) maps that we will create to display the spatial element of the survey data. Finally, we also plan to utilize help from MURI students in this process. Overall, this work will provide information on stakeholders and baseline data, it will begin the process of understanding and analyzing the historical and current patterns of and attitudes toward landscape change, and begin to identify social drivers of that change and thus vulnerabilities in the ecosystem services.