Local Governance, Ecological Knowledge, and Spatial Models: Assessing Resource Access in a Forest Commons

Local ecological knowledge informs how natural resource patches are identified and valued across a landscape by communities that rely on them. However, local knowledge is not always considered in quantitative models evaluating resource access and quality. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in southwest China, I integrate ecological, economic, and cultural factors to model non-timber forest product distribution and resource access in a community-based forest governance system. Observations over four mushroom harvesting seasons suggest that the distribution of harvesters relative to available resources follows the expected distribution under an ideal free distribution (IFD). An emergent ideal free distribution is significant as it may offer evidence of sustainable and equitable resource management. Moreover, this case offers an extension of the IFD by basing model parameters on locally-determined forest values and knowledge rather than predominantly environmental variables. Finally, results reaffirm that local forest management systems with adaptive property rights and redistributive norms offer multiple benefits for addressing resource governance challenges.