Land Conservation as an Opportunity for Flood Mitigation and Economic Development: A Case Study in Spruce Pine, North Carolina

Abstract

In September 2024, Hurricane Helene devastated Western North Carolina, a sobering reminder of the flood risk that the region faces. Western North Carolina is known for its natural resources and beauty, and as a result, its outdoor recreation economy has been growing in recent years, bringing new revenue, residents, visitors, and businesses to local communities. To protect these natural resources, conservation land trusts have protected over 3 million acres in the region. Economically speaking, Western North Carolina has higher poverty rates than the state and federal averages. Spruce Pine, for example, had a poverty rate of 18.7 percent in 2021, while statewide the rate was 13.7 percent, and nationally it was 12.6 percent. As such, economic development is an important goal of the region. These three factors come together under the framework of eco-DRR (ecosystem-based solutions for disaster risk reduction), strategies to reduce natural hazards impact through improved ecosystem management and potentially providing socio-economic and ecological co-benefits. This Master’s Project explored how land conservation could provide an opportunity for flood mitigation and economic development through outdoor recreation to benefit local communities to support the client, the Conservation Trust for North Carolina (CTNC). This project uses the Western North Carolina town of Spruce Pine as a case study for these questions. It applied an eco-DRR framework to produce a spatial model to select land parcels to consider for conservation by finding overlap between the Flood Exposure Index (FEI) and the Conservation Priority Index (CPI), adapted from Calil et al.’s methodology (2015). The indicators in the FEI are the 100- and 500-year floodplain, while the indicators in the CPI are proximity to protected lands, ecosystems of interest, high biodiversity importance score, and proximity to outdoor recreation assets. This resulted in 50 parcels that have both factors, providing CTNC with additional data points to incorporate into their existing decision-making processes when considering what land parcels to protect. Interestingly, the CPI indicators had a range of scores, with the outdoor recreation assets scoring above 0 in only 22 percent of the parcels. This leads to the conclusion that, while land conservation efforts and flood risk mitigation could overlap in Spruce Pine, for land conservation efforts and outdoor recreation economic development to overlap in Spruce Pine, additional investments are needed to expand the extent of assets. The Master’s Project presents the importance of implementing an eco-DRR framework to spatial models to consider potential ecological and socioeconomic co-benefits from improved ecosystem management to reduce natural hazards impacts. It complements CTNC’s existing, unmappable knowledge, such as personal connections and local history knowledge, to strengthen the land trust’s decision-making process for land conservation in Western North Carolina. I hope that the model developed in this project supports CTNC’s efforts to contribute to a stronger, more resilient future for Spruce Pine, Mitchell County, and Western North Carolina.