Overview
Carsey has created a unique interdisciplinary rural area studies program focused on sustaining rural communities and ecosystems, with active partnerships with community development practitioners and community foundations across rural America. Rural communities are rooted in connections to the land, waters, and forests that comprise the American landscape. The already challenging history of cycles of economic boom and bust in natural resource industries such as farming, fishing, forestry or mining are further complicated by globalization, resource depletion, changing demographics, new land use patterns, and climate change. Related dramatic changes in the cost and availability of energy have far reaching implications for the future of natural resource dependent communities.
The Carsey Institute’s interdisciplinary research team seeks to address these issues through building knowledge of the socio-economic conditions, ecosystem changes, and policy opportunities in communities where natural resources play an important role in the local economy. Our work explores the potential of working landscape development strategies to build, resilient local economies in rural and small-town America. Our objective is to provide high quality, policy-oriented information for use by rural advocates and policymakers, community development practitioners, the media, and the general public.
Publications
National
- Concentrated Rural Poverty and the Geography of Exclusion (Lichter and Parisi, 2008, Policy Brief) (copublished with Rural Realities)
- Measures and Methods: Four Tenets for Rural Economic Development in the New Economy (Brown-Graham and Lambe, 2008, Policy Brief No. 9)
- Religion, Politics, and the Environment in Rural America (Dillon and Henly, 2008, Issue Brief No. 3)
- Place Matters: Challenges and Opportunities in Four Rural Americas (Hamilton, Hamilton, Duncan, and Colocousis, 2008, Reports on Rural America, Volume 1, Number 4)
- Rural America in the 21st Century (Report to the National Rural Assembly, 2007)
- Biofueling Rural Development (Kleinschmit, 2007, Policy Brief No. 5)
New England
Selected current projects
Community & Environment in Rural America (CERA)
Challenged by a history of cycles of economic boom and bust, rural America is today confronted by globalization, resource depletion, changing demographics, new land use patterns, rising energy costs, and climate change. Carsey’s interdisciplinary CERA program uses over 10,000 household interviews from the UNH Survey Center to build knowledge of the socio-economic conditions, natural resource changes, and policy opportunities to sustain rural communities and ecosystems. The work includes solid, active partnerships with community development practitioners and community foundations across rural America.
Tracking Change in the North Country
A unique three-tiered effort to better understand the complex challenges facing New Hampshire's North Country. With the support of the Neil and Louise Tillotson Fund of the New Hamphshire Charitable Foundation, the Carsey Institute has developed an indicator