Keeping it wild: Mapping wilderness character in the United States

Abstract

A GIS-based approach is developed to identify the state of wilderness character in US wilderness areas using Death Valley National Park (DEVA) as a case study. A set of indicators and measures are identified by DEVA staff and used as the basis for developing a flexible and broadly applicable framework to map wilderness character using data inputs selected by park staff. Spatial data and GIS methods are used to map the condition of four qualities of wilderness character: natural, untrammelled, undeveloped, and solitude or primitive and unconfined recreation. These four qualities are derived from the US 1964 Wilderness Act and later developed by Landres et al. (2008a) in "Keeping it Wild: An Interagency Strategy to Monitor Trends in Wilderness Character Across the National Wilderness Preservation System." Data inputs are weighted to reflect their importance in relation to other data inputs and the model is used to generate maps of each of the four qualities of wilderness character. The combined map delineates the range of quality of wilderness character in the DEVA wilderness revealing the majority of wilderness character to be optimal quality with the best areas in the northern section of the park. This map will serve as a baseline for monitoring change in wilderness character and for evaluating the spatial impacts of planning alternatives for wilderness and backcountry stewardship plans. The approach developed could be applied to any wilderness area, either in the USA or elsewhere in the world.

A framework to measure the wildness of managed large vertebrate populations

“…For example, the wildness scores can be incorporated into landscape‐scale indicators that measure wilderness characteristics (Carver et al. ) to prioritize areas for protected‐area expansion or corridor creation.…”

“…Although our framework does not explicitly link to indices of natural habitat, intactness, or productivity, the wildness scores can be aggregated for each property or protected area (if a standardized set of species is assessed) and incorporated into broader biodiversity assessments at landscape scales. For example, the wildness scores can be incorporated into landscape-scale indicators that measure wilderness characteristics (Carver et al 2013) to prioritize areas for protected-area expansion or corridor creation.…”

Spatial analysis of selected biodiversity features in protected areas: a case study in Tuscany region

“…This contribution represents, the relative importance of the indicators (weights) shown in Table 4 (Alleva and Falorsi, 2009;Sanguansat, 2012). The aggregation method chosen in this paper is the "Weighted Linear Combination" (WLC) that was already applied in other works on environmental analysis (Comber et al, 2010;Carver et al, 2012Carver et al, , 2013Orsi et al, 2013).…”

Transportation planning and quiet natural areas preservation: Aircraft overflights noise assessment in a National Park

“…This research field frequently presents conflicting results and many of the past studies have been inconclusive, often focused on animal behavior and based on relatively small sample sizes, without taking into account reproductive success or the fact that anthropogenic noise may not be the main cause of the negative relationship between species richness/abundance and proximity to presumed disturbing sources (Pepper et al, 2003;Kight and Swaddle, 2011;Summers et al, 2011). Therefore, multistep approach focuses may be helpful for building spatial models that show varying impacts on wilderness which may be required to manage threats from such pressures as external sources of pollution (Carver et al, 2013).…”