Well-Being Assessment of Communities in the Klamath Region

The purpose of this social assessment is to assess the current state of well-being of communities in the Klamath region, an area encompassing six northern California counties and three southern Oregon counties. This assessment is accomplished through an analysis of socioeconomic measures and community capacity.

The social assessment report is divided into four sections. The first section briefly describes the geographic area included in this assessment. The second section discusses methods employed in the study, and is divided into five sub-sections: 1) types and sources of information; 2) the unit of analysis; 3) community socioeconomic factors; 4) community capacity; and 5) spatial analysis.

The third section focuses on the results and discussion of the assessments. Findings from capacity assessment workshops, the socioeconomic scale, and analysis of capacity and socioeconomic factors are reviewed by region. The relationship of spatial variables to capacity and socioeconomic factors are discussed. A summary of what is learned from this integrated assessment concludes the paper in the fourth and final section.

The diagram in Figure 1 demonstrates the methodological flow of this social assessment. The methods section first describes the development of the primary data sources and the "community aggregation" analysis unit, which is based on Bureau of the Census block groups. A discussion of the methodological development of the socioeconomic scale and measurement of capacity follows. The socioeconomic scale is based exclusively on a diverse set of Census measures. This scale includes critical components of well-being but is not, in itself, exhaustive of all measures of well-being. Community capacity reflects a dynamic and multi-dimensional component of human well-being. It was assessed through workshops held with local experts. The spatial analysis subsection describes how block group aggregation point data is determined and used to explore the relationships between socioeconomic factors, community capacity, and aggregation location and proximity to other geographic features.

A separate but related study of Trinity County was conducted by the Watershed Research and Training Center to show how annual measures might be linked to forest management activities and used to examine socioeconomic factors of well-being. Such a linkage greatly assists in the development and evaluation of consequences of forest policy scenarios and ecosystem management more generally.

FIGURE 1: Social Assessment Methodology

Study location

The social assessment focuses on the Klamath region and an area of influence of the Klamath National Forest. Because county boundaries delimit this study region, the nine county study area includes portions of the California coast, Cascades, Modoc Plateau and the Klamath physiographic provinces (FEMAT 1993). This study area includes three southern Oregon counties, Josephine, Jackson, and Klamath, and the northern California counties of Humboldt, Del Norte, Trinity, Siskiyou, Shasta, and Modoc. This physigraphically diverse region ranges in elevation from the 4,317 meter peak of Mt. Shasta, which is roughly in the center of the study area, to sea level at the Pacific Coast to the west. The region stretches to the Modoc Plateau and its basin and range topography to the east, Crater Lake National Park to the north, and to the upper end of the Sacramento Valley of California to the south. In addition to the entire Klamath River basin, which includes the Trinity River, the region includes the upper Rogue River Valley, the headwaters of the Sacramento River, the Smith River basin, the lower portion of the Eel River watershed, as well as the Mattole, Bear, Elk and other north coast tributaries.