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Slide show: Ray Rasker’s keynote to the 2020 Outdoor Economy Conference highlights ways to build an outdoor community.
As U.S. jobless claims reach historic levels from the coronavirus pandemic, find the latest county-level unemployment numbers.
Montana’s outdoors attracts people and talent, creating jobs and a high quality of life. The outdoors is essential to the state’s future economic growth.
What is the economic impact of America’s public lands and waters? How can we quantify how these remarkable resources contribute to our quality of life? And how are our valuation methods and public policies changing?
Study on the economic impacts of redesignating Bandelier National Monument as a National Park with case studies of other Monuments converted to National Parks.
A new report highlights the role of Montana’s outdoor recreation economy in spending, jobs, and economic diversification.
Populations at Risk quickly and easily generates and downloads reports about populations more likely to experience adverse social, health, or economic outcomes.
Investigating the economic effects of National Monuments redesignated National Parks, and the potential impact of converting the White Sands National Monument to a National Park.
This report summarizes Gallatin County’s economy, how it has grown, and what is driving its performance. The report also describes how growth threatens open space and the role these lands play in local quality of life.
Explore all communities threatened by wildfires from 2000 to 2017.
The sortable table identifies frequently threatened towns and cities, including the different sizes and distances of wildfires from nearby communities.
A new tool helps the City of Santa Fe, New Mexico assess wildfire and populations at risk.
Western counties once dependent on timber today perform similarly to like-sized counties. Three case studies outline economic lessons from counties that weathered the timber transition.
This report summarizes Montana’s economy analyzing recent growth and what is driving its performance, including a description of how federal lands help attract people, investment, and businesses.
Non-labor income sources such as investments, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid often are the largest and fastest growing sources of personal income for many counties. Rural counties especially are surprisingly dependent on non-labor income.
Headwaters Economics compiled a number of regional reports, case studies, tools, research library, and related news articles on the value of public lands to nearby communities.
Slide show: The role of federal lands in rural development.
Wildfire experts outline key science insights important to inform policy discussions and development while reducing future risks and costs.
While most western rural counties are aging and losing young families, the loss of school kids in rural western counties with protected lands such as National Monuments was, on average, less than half the rate of loss for similar counties without protected lands.
Recent trends in manufacturing and what they mean for the people and communities of the American West, with insights for rural areas in particular.
Kelly Pohl, who researches climate resilience, housing and land use at Headwaters Economics said that in high-demand places like mountain towns and coastal areas disasters tend to accelerate gentrification.
“There are a lot of cities that share similarities with what happened in Los Angeles,” said Kelly Pohl with Headwaters Economics, a non-profit research group in Montana that had done research on the cost of retrofitting homes to protect against wildfires. Think Boise, Idaho. Salt Lake City.
“A lot of Montanans can do things before a fire starts,” said Kelly Pohl, an the associate director of Headwaters Economics. “We have to realize that wildfire is part of our landscape, so we have to take actions to reduce the likelihood that it will destroy property.”
Wildfires threaten nearly one-third of U.S. residents and buildings, according to a new government analysis that suggests the risk is greater than previously known. The Forest Service, working with Montana researchers, took a new approach to measuring wildfire risk and limited its historical analysis to the 15 years between 2004 and 2018.