Eckert, Penny. 1998. The social construction of a watershed: Changing rights and changing land. Ph.D.
This study explores the relationship between land cover and property over 150 years by examining in detail the land and property history of a particular area, and tracing changes in land cover to the major factors influencing landowners who caused or permitted these changes to occur. This case study was conducted in the lower watershed of the Dungeness River on the Northern Olympic Peninsula of Washington State, where irrigation systems controlled, and continue to control, the kinds of land uses and therefore, the landscape appearance.
Methods used to study the pattern of land cover change and property boundary change over time were aerial photo interpretation and geographic system analysis (GIS). Processes driving land cover change through the agency of landowners and tenants were studies using population and agricultural censuses for the area, content analysis of telephone directories and local newspapers, interviews, and property title searches. The study drew on the legal and regulatory context for development of property rights in land and water, and on the history of irrigation and of planning in the area.
Results are presented in a series of maps of land and property change. Land cover changed from forest to farm to scattered rural residential, and property holdings shifted from large to very small parcels. The study shows that property in land is both a pattern on the landscape and a set of dynamic human relationships, constantly negotiated, disputed resolved, and renegotiated. Tenure other than fee simple ownership is shown to be important in land cover change. Multiple factors, some with lag times of decades, are show to work together to cause land cover change. The study concludes that the constant negotiations about property rights in water and land, both formal and informal, make a major contribution to how people think about land and what kinds of land uses to make of it. They study suggests that thinking about planning as a property process and recognizing it as part of a larger negotiation process about property rights, will improve the success of planning implementation.