Recent harvest declines in the Western United States have focused attention on the question of economic impacts at the community level. The impact of changing timber-related economic activity in a given community on other local activity and the general economic health of the community at large has been a persistent and often contentious issue in debates surrounding forest policy decisions. The economic base hypothesis, in which changes in local export-related economic activity are assumed to cause changes in economic activity serving local demand, is a common framework for understanding impacts of forest policy decisions and forms the basis of models commonly used to provide estimates of expected local impacts under different policy options. This study uses community-specific, time-series employment data to test the economic base hypothesis in the small, semi-isolated communities of southeast Alaska. Estimates were derived for each of 15 communities. Export-related activity was not found to cause changes in economic activity serving local demand for the average community. However, the results indicated statistically significant differences among communities in their response to shocks in export related activity. The implications of these results for policy, and for the theory and practice of modeling economic impacts at small spatial scales, are explored in the final sections of this study. Specifically, secondary economic impacts cannot be taken as a foregone conclusion in policy analysis, and the fundamental assumptions of static impact modeling approaches deserve greater scrutiny.

Examines the conflict surrounding public land management, revealing how problematic language in public land laws, scarcity of resources, and mistrust cloud the debates, and offering a range of solutions to help move beyond the dysfunctional status quo management.

In 1997, scientists at the Pacific Northwest Research Station initiated several social science studies in response to information gaps identified while developing the Tongass Land Management Plan. Results presented here summarize findings from studies of demographic trends and tourism trends in the region based on data available through 2002. Demographic trends suggest that despite having many unique geographic, climatic, and physical characteristics, southeast Alaska exhibits many social conditions and trends similar to those statewide, as well as in the greater United States and nonmetropolitan United States. Much variation exists at the community level, however, when measuring change in population and income in southeast Alaska. In the last decade, tourism has been one of the fastest growing components of Alaskas economy and an important source of export-based income. Natural resource management and use in Alaska will affect and will be affected by trends in tourism growth and activities.

The main purpose of this Handbook is to provide overviews and assessments of the state-of-the-art regarding research methods, approaches and applications central to economic geography. The chapters are written by distinguished researchers from a variet