County Parks and Century Farms: Integrating GIS into the Environmental Studies Curriculum and Collaborative Research at Linfield College

Jack Murphy
jmurphy@linfield.edu
Department of Biology

and

Tom Love
tlove@linfield.edu
Department of Sociology and Anthropology

Stimulated by the insights provided by computer-assisted spatial analysis, both natural and social scientists working in environmental studies fields increasingly recognize the need for Geographic Information Systems skills for themselves and their students. This grant will fund hardware and software acquisition and workshop training to support coursework and related collaborative research projects in Environmental Studies being launched at Linfield College. These fall into two areas, one in Biology: “Moving Environmental Studies back to the Field: High Resolution, Labor-intensive, Long Term, GIS-based Mapping of a County Park,” (link 3 to text below) and one in Sociology/Anthropology: “Century Farms and Sustainability in Yamhill County.” The complete grant proposal can be found here.

This research is supported by a grant from the Northwestern Academic Computing Consortium, NWACC.

“ Moving Environmental Studies back to the Field: High Resolution, Labor-intensive, Long Term, GIS-based mapping of a County Park,”
Many introductory-level environmental studies courses take place exclusively in the classroom, instead of immersed in their subject. We intend to reformat our ENV 101 Human Ecology course to include weekly lab sessions in addition to regular classroom meetings. During these lab sessions, students will observe examples of the principles discussed in class (animal and plant biodiversity, habitat diversity, watersheds and water quality, soil properties, land management, etc.) and will supplement their observations with data collection. To make these exercises clearly relevant, the data collected will support continuing research projects by faculty at Linfield College, and students will work with GIS software to make graphical summaries. The data will accumulate over the years, and students will be able to compare their data to that collected by previous classes and to search for emerging patterns.

Initially, we will “adopt” a local county park for fine-scale GIS-based mapping. The results of our efforts to date are presented at this link. Charles Metsker County Park just northwest of McMinnville is readily accessible and frequently used by students and other members of the Linfield College community as well as by McMinnville school children and wider public. Its mission is dedicated to the promotion of environmental education, it has excellent supporting facilities (covered picnic tables, good trails, adequate access and parking), and it is a rich natural setting, with a creek, a pond, and a well-established second-growth forest.

Century Farms and Sustainability in Yamhill County.

The second project "Century Farms and Sustainability in Yamhill County" will be headed up by Prof. Tom Love, Anthropology, and colleagues in the Sociology/Anthropology Department. The core idea is to use the durability of Century Farms as a surrogate measure for sustainability, and utilizing a variety of survey, ethnographic and GIS methodologies to investigate the environmental, economic, social and cultural correlates of this sustainability.

The Century Farm/Ranch Program began in 1958 with the Oregon Historical Society as a way to honor ongoing, family-run farms and ranches across the state and recognize Oregon's rich agricultural heritage. The simple yet elegant idea of using their longevity as a measure of sustainability belongs to colleague Sheila Cordray, sociologist at Oregon State University. About 1990 she initiated a statewide survey of participants in the program, but ran into logistical problems (chiefly address changes) which brought the project to a premature halt. The program itself has undergone some transformation in recent years, moving from the OHS to the Oregon Agricultural Education Foundation. We propose to restart this inquiry into the correlates of agricultural sustainability, but on a more modest scale. Dr. Love has twice taken classes to visit nearby farmer John Rossner, Bellevue, former head of the Oregon Farm Bureau, who also participated in a panel discussion of environmental sustainability at Linfield College in the early 1990s. Love has already conferred with the manager of the project, Roylene Read, who is enthusiastic about it and generously provided some of the database printout on the 83 registered Century Farms in the county. Love will soon be contacting the OAEF with a more formal proposal. The Yamhill County Geographic Information Systems Department (John Caputo caputoj@co.yamhill.or.us) is eager to support this collaborative faculty-student research project to map century farms in Yamhill County and begin the long-term study of factors promoting sustainability in Oregon agriculture.

By summer 2006 students Sirpa Peterson and Kelli Stewart, along with Prof.
Love, had made contact with and interviewed all active century farmers in
Yamhill County. Data are being entered and analyzed in an SPSS
spreadsheet, and a final project report will be posted here. Preliminary
results were shared with the Oregon Century Farm Program board at their 9
Feburary 2006 meeting.

A GIS-generated map showing Century Farms overlain on an aerial photo of
Yamhill County can be found *here*(710kb).

A map of land use in Yamhill County (1980) can be found here.

History Of Charles Metsker Park

Previous work that has been done at Metsker Park includes a nature trail, a venue for research and analysis by students at Linfield College for various experiments, education site for public schools, Baker Creek Watershed Workshop for teachers and many others. Weyerhaeuser is the surrounding owner and work has been done between the friends of the park and Weyerhaeuser to enhance studies and link the property of the park and the surrounding property owned by Weyerhaeuser.
Location of Metsker Park

The main purpose of this part of our grant is to collect and summarize as much environmental information as we can about Metsker Park, in a continuing effort by Linfield environmental studies students. The results of our efforts to date are presented on the Metsker Map page.

You can also view a slide show of Metsker Park

This web page was designed in part by Sara Williams, swillia@linfield.edu.