Understanding how rural community stakeholders value and benefit from natural landscapes

Land managers and decision-makers must incorporate a wide diversity of values into landscape planning and management. Benefits based management (BBM), a new land management framework, can help managers do this. Using the BBM framework, this thesis introduces a holistic model that integrates the benefits communities attain from rural landscapes into natural resource management.; Two studies that examined four landscapes in northern Minnesota and eastern North Dakota are discussed. The first study focused on landscape values and was designed to understand how people living in rural environments value specific landscape physical features and opportunities. The second study focused in on how people want to benefit from a smaller landscape managed for a specific purpose--recreation. Both studies used a two phase approach. In the first, qualitative data was attained through meetings with local stakeholders. The second phase used information from the phase one meetings to develop a questionnaire that targeted stakeholders' landscape values, important community benefits, and preferred management activities.; Results show stakeholders value the landscape for a variety of noneconomic and economic reasons. They see rural landscapes as areas that not only help them attain financial income, but, also as areas that affect their overall quality of life through the production of abstract, psychological benefits. Their preferences for management to attain desired benefits centered around education and cooperative planning. Specific study findings are discussed and implications for management are suggested.