NSRC RESEARCHER PROFILE:  Lisa Chase
Exploring issues surrounding rural recreation and tourism to help strengthen economies of Northern Forest communities.

Video: Recreation, Tourism and the Northern Forest

Lisa Chase is a natural resources specialist with University of Vermont (UVM) Extension and director of the Vermont Tourism Data Center at UVM. She supports programs in natural resources management and agriculture by educating citizens and strengthening rural communities of the Northern Forest region through her research on issues confronting communities in developing or expanding viable recreation and tourism enterprises.

"Land ownership changes, globalization of the timber industry, growing recreational demand, and new conservation easements have all contributed to the changing landscape of the Northern Forest region," explains Lisa. "The speed and scope of change is unprecedented, and rural development plans created in the early stages of Northern Forest planning have quickly become outdated. To effectively adapt and plan, Northern Forest communities urgently need a better understanding of how social and economic forces are affecting rural development prospects, particularly with respect to tourism and recreation."

To address these issues, Lisa was awarded Northeastern States Research Cooperative (NSRC) funding to explore opportunities and risks associated with rural tourism. Lisa and collaborator Roelof Boumans, of the University of Vermont Gund Institute for Ecological Economics, combined the diverse perspectives gained through citizen involvement with the analytical tools of computer modeling, a process called participatory modeling, in communities throughout northern New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire.

"Participatory modeling strengthened relationships, promoted systems thinking, and helped build consensus among community members," says Lisa. The product was a user-friendly computer model to help Northern Forest communities make informed decisions about tourism development available at http://www.uvm.edu/tourismresearch/partmodel.htm.

To explore the economic concerns of rural tourism development, Lisa examined the Northern Forest Canoe Trail (NFCT) as a model. With NSRC funding, Lisa and UVM colleagues collaborated with staff of the NFCT to investigate the economic impact of paddlers on communities along the waterway from northern New York to northern Maine. The researchers discovered that approximately 90,000 visitors paddled NFCT waterways in six study regions in 2006, and paddler spending created $12 million in total economic impacts, supporting about 280 jobs.

"Our findings suggest that spending by visitors to the canoe trail may help diversify local economies," indicates Lisa. "Communities can work together to further enhance the economic benefits and minimize any negative impacts of increased visitation."

"One thing that we've learned, in large part through our work with Lisa, is that there's a lot of information embedded in communities or being developed at the state level about tourism that doesn't always get shared across communities and states," explains Kate Williams, executive director of NFCT. "What Lisa has been able to do and what our project is all about is sharing information across state and community boundaries because often times, it's literally a river's width away that one community is doing great work that another community could benefit from."

Much of the recreation and tourism in the Northern Forest region depends not only on communities but on private landowners within those communities. According to Lisa, the tradition of free and open access to private land in the Northern Forest region has begun to erode in recent years. Prompted by the need to understand more about land ownership and public access trends, Lisa and her NSRC co-investigators from the four-state region invited landowners, conservation and recreation groups, and recreational users to participate in a web forum. Researchers also distributed a mail survey to 600 landowners in each state. (NSRC Project Link: Public Access to Private Lands for Recreation and Tourism in the Northern Forest)

"The perception held by the majority of private landowners and the public sentiment from the web forum suggested that public access in the region has decreased over the past ten years," reveals Lisa. Despite this view, Lisa notes that survey responses indicated 87% of large investment landowners allow public recreation on their lands. Almost half of smaller private landowners have not limited recreational access to their lands in the same ten years, and less than 10% have closed off their land completely. Visit http://www.privatelandaccess.org/ for complete project results.

Lisa is based out of the Brattleboro UVM Extension office but frequently visits the Northern Forest region for work and for recreation. She and her family enjoy hiking, kayaking, cycling, skiing, and appreciating the spectacular scenery in the Northern Forest.

Video produced by the Northeastern States Research Cooperative and the Northern Forest Center

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© 2010 NORTHEASTERN STATES RESEARCH COOPERATIVE
USDA Forest Service
The Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources at the University of Vermont
University of New Hampshire in cooperation with the Hubbard Brook Research Foundation
Center for Research on Sustainable Forests at the University of Maine
State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry