Understanding the social, cultural and economic factors underlying land use decisions and land use change is crucial to achieve sustainable forest and agriculture production systems and conservation biodiversity goals. The fragmentation of landscapes affects the social groups living in the area and their social systems. Urbanization and changes in resource policies and commodity prices have caused substantial changes in land use in both the temperate ecosystems of the western United States and the tropical ecosystems of Central America. Public and private protected areas have been established in an attempt to achieve biodiversity goals and promote ecotourism.

An important social science focus is adoption-diffusion theory and practice.Related potential research questions include: what changes in people's lifestyles and activities are necessary to implement production systems which will also achieve conservation biodiversity goals? what are the social, cultural and economic constraints to readily adopting changes? who will adopt what and for how long?

Structural and cultural influences affecting people's relationship to the environment must also be understood. Research questions include: what are the impacts of the political and economic system(s) on sustainable production and biodiversity in fragmented landscapes? what are the values, attitudes, knowledge and behaviors of various populations with respect to land management practices and biodiversity? What changes in property rights and land tenure systems will be required to achieve biodiversity goals? How does attachment to occupation, lifestyle and/or place affect sustainable production and biodiversity goals?

Research questions examining theories of civic society, collaboration in natural resource planning and other public participation activities are also important. Much is to be learned to better understand how to provide collaboration opportunities and to capitalize on the considerable human resources that the public can bring to public natural resource management. Research must consider local knowledge as well as scientific knowledge. The design of systems of payments for environmental services is also important research to undertake. Research questions related to estimating the value of non-market goods and services, ways to reduce transactions costs between those that supply and those that demand environmental services, and analyses of the equity considerations are all important areas of inquiry.

Many of the above research questions can be easily integrated with questions originating from the conservation biology perspective. Furthermore, questions about how farmers perceive and relate to the biodiversity present within their farm systems are also important and complementary. The simultaneous examination of one phenomenon, like ecosystem fragmentation, from a conservation biology, agricultural and socioeconomic point of view by teams of interacting and cooperating graduate students is an enormous strength of our educational program.