Treesearch

This study examined students’ attitudes toward the impact monster and the good guy roles in the impact monster skit and determined if attitudes differed by gender and grade level. In addition, differences in high- and low-involvement with the skit were analyzed. The impact monster skit is a popular wilderness education program designed to teach appropriate wilderness behavior and low-impact skills. Results indicate that the students had favorable attitudes toward the “good guy” and unfavorable attitudes toward the “impact monster.” Significant differences were found for grade level and...

This research examines western American political (sub)culture as it pertains to past and future wilderness, monument and park designation. It thus provides a sort of rough map, or cultural compass, in determining the most likely political obstacles (other than political institutions) and detours in the creation of new nonmultiple use areas. It explores landmarks such as Western environmental public opinion, the Western federal presence, the West seen as plundered province, bumper-sticker economics, differences between de facto and de jure wilderness designation, and others. Like all maps,...

I conducted a survey of wilderness areas to provide an overview of plant invasions in the National Wilderness Preservation System. Fifteen per cent of responding mangers reported that exotic plants were among their top 10 management concerns, either because they are actively dealing with control of exotic pest plants or have prioritized prevention of their establishment. Seventy per cent of responding wilderness areas do not monitor or inventory for exotic plants. The majority of respondents reported that exotic plants have not impacted their areas, so it is important to emphasize preventio...

Landscapes protect biological diversity and provide unique opportunities for human-nature interactions. Too often, these desirable settings suffer from extremely high visitation. Given the complexity of social, environmental and economic interactions, resource managers need tools that provide insights into the cause and effect relationships between management actions and social and environmental outcomes. Object-oriented technology, along with spatial geo-referenced temporal data, provides new opportunities for developing, testing and improving simulation models. This paper describes a...

Displacement has traditionally been defined as a process in which visitors cease using a recreation site because of sensitivity to crowding or other impacts. This study argues that such a definition is overly narrow: Displacement may also occur when those sensitive to regulation cease using a resource. Evidence for the two types of displacement was collected through self-administered surveys at three Oregon wilderness trailheads in 1991 and 1997. At two areas, use levels and impacts were high in both study periods. At the third, use limits were imposed in 1995, reducing the number of...

Thirty-eight papers related to the theme of wilderness in the context of larger systems are included. Three overview papers synthesize existing knowledge and research about wilderness economics, relationships between wilderness and surrounding social communities, and relationships between wilderness and surrounding ecological communities and processes. Other papers deal with wilderness meanings and debates; wilderness within larger ecosystems; and social, economic, and policy issues.

Ten papers presented as plenary talks at the conference, "Wilderness Science in a Time of Change," are included. Topics include: the influence of global change on wilderness and its management; contemporary criticisms and celebrations of the wilderness idea; the capacity of science to meet the challenges and opportunities wilderness presents; wilderness in relation to biological conservation and the human experience of wilderness; and fundamental dilemmas of wilderness management.

Thirty-seven papers are presented on wilderness visitors, experiences, and visitor management. Three overview papers synthesize knowledge and research about wilderness visitors, management of visitor experiences, and wilderness recreation planning. Other papers contain the results of specific research projects on wilderness visitors, information and education, and visitor management.

FireFamily Plus is the new software for summarizing and analyzing daily weather observations and computing fire danger indexes based on the National Fire Danger Rating System (NFDRS). While the software and packaging are new, many of the reports are not. FireFamily Plus addressed the year 2000 issues that confronted a litany of DOS programs that operated against fire weather files and combined the critical functionality of many of those programs into one 32-bit Windows program. FireFamily Plus philosophy departs significantly from the traditional way of processing historical NFDRS indexes....

Data collected from an online needs assessment revealed that Web site visitors with an interest in wilderness seek several different types of information. In order to gain further insight into the process of Web use for wilderness information, a follow-up analysis was conducted. This analysis was exploratory in nature, with the goal of identifying information domains of interest to potential audiences and to determine why certain groups of individuals have different information needs. The data were factor analyzed to determine logical information domains. Six information domains were...