Emergent issues in forest plan revision: A dialogue

Working with National Forest planners can raise many questions for social scientists regarding their role in planning or plan revision. Social scientists from the North Central Forest Experiment Station and the National Forest System Eastern Region debate 3 questions that continue to surface in their work with Forest Service managers on plan revision: first, what is the role of social scientists in the critical venue of public involvement? Second, the costly and time consuming task of social assessment is considered: what are the merits of full versus partial social assessments? And third, along more philosophical lines, do social scientists play the same role in plan revision that all other scientists play, or do social scientists play a potentially more sensitive role? Because there are no simple right and wrong answers, this paper explores the questions in point-counterpoint style.