Settlement in the Sierra

* Deforestation in the Mid-1800s

Resource Use: Changing Needs Through Time

REGIONAL ECONOMIES

* SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC ANALYSIS

Community Well-Being in the Sierra

Management Scenarios and Strategies

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Income, Jobs, and the Growth of Local Economies

Over the past twenty years the economy of the Sierra Nevada region, like the population, has more than doubled. The natural and cultural environment of the Sierra Nevada has attracted new business owners, employees, and retirees to the region. From 1978 to 1993 alone, 7,500 new small businesses were started in the twelve-county area all or mainly within the SNEP core region. During the last twenty years, the major commodity-based sectorsagriculture, timber, and miningexperienced little or no growth in employment. On a rangewide basis, recreation and tourism provide more jobs and roughly the same total amount of wages as all the commodity-based sectors combined. Individual workers in the recreation and tourism sectors, however, earn lower hourly wages and work fewer hours per week on average than most commodity production workers.

The major demographic trends of in-migration of new residents employed in new businesses and retirees bringing transfer incomes have had a much greater impact on the economy than the large commodity and recreation-based industries of the region. Similarly, the economic stimulus from new businesses, commuters, and retirees is now far greater than that provided by all the commodity and recreation-based employment in the region. One of the major implications of this trend is that the economic character of the region is less influenced by the major resource industries and agencies and is becoming more similar to the diverse economy and society of California as a whole.

Patterns of demographic and economic change vary considerably across the range. By 1992, personal income levels in the Sierra portions of the counties of Nevada, Placer, and El Dorado, where 40% of the recent population growth in the Sierra took place, were on a par with the rest of the state. Personal income levels in the rest of the region have remained at 80% of state average for the past twenty years. Although all regions are now less dependent on the historically important agricultural, mining, and timber sectors, only the more metropolitan counties experienced large changes in economic status. The experience of the west-central north region may be repeated in other parts of the Sierra Nevada if they follow similar demographic trends over the next few decades.

Personal Income

In 1972, locally earned wages made up nearly 70% of all personal income in the region. Wages earned by commuters working outside of the region, interest and dividends, and government transfer payments such as social security made up the rest of personal income. By 1992, local wages constituted less than half of all personal income. Income earned by commuters, interest, dividends, and transfer payments to retired and other households now constitute more than half the total personal income in the Sierra Nevada. A significant implication of this change is that the regional economies are now less influenced by fluctuations in local employment in the cyclical commodity, construction, and tourism sectors. Differences in employment patterns still define the unique aspects of local economies but do not drive them as they did before the 1980s.

Regional Economies by Ecological Regions

Specific linkages between the economy and the ecosystem vary across the range and are most apparent at regional levels. To illustrate the regional differences, we analyzed the entire Sierra using two different types of regions: one based on socioeconomic characteristics and the other on major biophysical characteristics. The six economic regions are based on socioeconomic characteristics, following county boundaries and influence zones of major metropolitan economies. The broad-scale ecosystem boundaries follow a simple west foothill, conifer, and east-side breakdown. The population living in the foothill zone was estimated by allocating the 180 census blockbased community aggregations (described later) where most people lived below the 3,000-foot elevation line that approximates the boundary between foothill and conifer ecosystems. Table 2.2 shows the population by ecological region. The east-side region includes the Greater Lake Tahoe Basin (GLTB) west of Donner Pass but does not include the small communities in Sierra, Plumas, and Lassen Counties that are topographically east of the Sierra Nevada crest and are more similar to communities on the west side of the crest. The population within each economic region is not spread evenly across the major vegetation zones.

Regional population by ecological and socioeconomic regions. Population sums are approximate and are based on a simple classification that does not split large community aggregations. (From volume III, chapter 23.)