Sense of place as an indicator of community sustainability

"Sense of place," or the meaning and attachments that community residents h ave towards their community, is a potentially useful and somewhat neglected indicator of sustainability. Issues of human community need to be addresse d in forest management. Recent considerations of forests as complex ecologi cal systems to be sustained have tended to neglect human concerns. These in clude, but are not limited to, economic well-being: other "subjective" indi cators of quality of life are also relevant, and comprehensible via convent ional scientific inquiry. Sense of place is one such indicator - although q uantitative research on sense of place is in its infancy, it is readily und erstood through conventional social psychological measures, which have the advantage of being monitored over time or compared across settings.