Abandonment and rebound: Societal views on landscape- and land-use change and their impacts on water and soils – ABRESO

This project addresses soil and water sustainability in landscapes undergoing transitions. Management and social-cultural changes create transitions, altering watershed properties (soil and water quality, and related ecosystem services) in a manner that stakeholders may not understand or appreciate. Yet changes affect stakeholders, what they want to preserve or change, and their views of land management strategies. The general theme of this project, to occur in France, Italy, Japan, Taiwan, and the United States, is to determine actual and perceived effects of land use transitions on critical zone (CZ) function in the context of land abandonment. Actual effects will consider biogeochemical cycles under changing inputs of altered land management. Water flows and nutrient concentration/discharge analysis of watersheds will apply available long-term data sets to assess transitions in the CZ that affect biogeochemical cycles, with supplemental sampling during the project. With input from stakeholders we will answer questions such as "Do abandoned landscapes return to a "natural" state or are novel ecosystems generated? and "How does environmental quality/ecosystem health vary based on current and future pathways of CZ dynamics, among landscapes with different land use management? Perceived effects will consider stakeholder expectation, preference and evaluation of ecosystem services and disservices. We will test the extent to which heterogeneity in such perceptions is a function of differences between and within stakeholders (e.g., urban vs. rural, resident vs. visitor, and endorsement of environmental values), and how change is framed across different spatial scales from a local to watershed scale or beyond (e.g., whether change reflects more vs. less human use of land and the reasons for change). We will examine associations between perceptions and support for land use change and management decisions (self-sustained or policy-driven), and inform ways to effectively communicate with stakeholders and consider their views of land use conversion and restoration.