Twenty years of change on campsites in the backcountry of Grand Canyon National Park.
نویسندگان
چکیده
This article draws on three separate research and monitoring studies to describe 20-year trends in the number and condition of campsites in the backcountry of Grand Canyon National Park. Results are used to assess the effectiveness of a complex and innovative management program, adopted in 1983, that sought to concentrate use on designated campsites in popular places and disperse camping in more remote places. In 1984, conditions on 12 high-use campsites and 12 low-use campsites were carefully assessed. Conditions on 22 of these campsites were reassessed in 2005. In addition, campsite-monitoring surveys were conducted between 1985 and 1992 and again in 2003 and 2004. In these surveys, all campsites were located and their condition rapidly assessed. The detailed assessment of a sample of sites suggests relatively little change in condition during the 20-year period. The high-use sites were more highly disturbed than the low-use sites, but they did not change more during the study period. In contrast, changes at larger scales were dramatic. The total number of campsites more than doubled during the study period. Surprisingly, the proliferation of new campsites was greater in places where camping was only allowed on designated campsites than in places where camping was allowed anywhere. Concern that concentration of use on designated sites would cause unacceptable impact was unfounded. Management implications for other internationally significant protected areas that allow backcountry camping are explored.
منابع مشابه
Research To Guide Management Of Backcountry Camping At Isle Royale National Park: Part II – Prescriptive Research
This paper is the second in a sequence of two papers that report on descriptive and prescriptive research undertaken at Isle Royale National Park to support development of a new wilderness management plan at the Park. The first paper reports on the initial phase of study aimed at developing descriptive information on backcountry camping at Isle Royale using computer simulation modeling. The pre...
متن کاملChange within and among forest communities: the influence of historic disturbance, environmental gradients, and community attributes
W. A. Bunn ([email protected]), C. B. Brown and N. J. Sanders, Dept of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Univ. of Tennessee, 569 Dabney Hall, Knoxville, TN 37996, USA. (Present address of W. A. B.: USDOI, National Park Service, Grand Canyon National Park, P. O. Box 129, Grand Canyon, AZ 86023, USA.) !M. A. Jenkins, USDOI, National Park Service, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, 1314 Cheroke...
متن کاملSandbars in the Colorado River: an Environmental Consulting Project
The National Park Service funded a study to determine the impact of water released from the Glen Canyon Dam on sandbars downriver through Grand Canyon National Park. The project involved considerable amounts of messy and missing data. Some of the challenges faced and lessons learned during this project are described.
متن کاملExtinction of Harrington's mountain goat.
Keratinous horn sheaths of the extinct Harrington's mountain goat, Oreamnos harringtoni, were recovered at or near the surface of dry caves of the Grand Canyon, Arizona. Twenty-three separate specimens from two caves were dated nondestructively by the tandem accelerator mass spectrometer (TAMS). Both the TAMS and the conventional dates indicate that Harrington's mountain goat occupied the Grand...
متن کاملذخیره در منابع من
با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید
برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید
ثبت ناماگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید
ورودعنوان ژورنال:
- Environmental management
دوره 41 6 شماره
صفحات -
تاریخ انتشار 2008