The following provides an overview of some of the Leopold Institute's Highlights for fiscal year 2006:
GENERAL HIGHLIGHTS: Fiscal Year 2006
- David Parsons initiated a new project with the National Park Service to re-sample campsites in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. These sites were initially inventoried in the late-1970's and provide a valuable baseline for tracking change.
- David Parsons served as a member of the planning committee for the 2007 George Wright Society Conference to be held in St. Paul, MN.
- David Parsons participated as a member of Ecological Society of America's proposal review panel for the National Park Foundation/Andrew Mellon Foundation's program to support post doctoral students working on plant studies in national parks.
- David Parsons was appointed as lead of RMRS Strategic Program Area (SPA) team for Recreation. The team is charged with developing a strategic plan for the future of the Station's recreation research program. David Cole serves as a co-lead on this team.
- David Parsons continues to serve on the committee to review proposals submitted to Grand Teton Natural History Association for graduate studies on the Greater Yellowstone Area through the Boyd Evison fellowship.
- David Cole, in collaboration with Troy Hall at the University of Idaho, completed fieldwork on a series of nine studies related to management of visitors in highly used wilderness in the Pacific Northwest. Additional information about these studies and resultant reports are available on the Leopold Institute's website at: http://leopold.wilderness.net/research/fprojects/F007_B.htm.
- David Cole developed a new agreement with the University of Montana to host a workshop in spring of 2007 on, "Beyond naturalness: desired conditions for protected area environments."
- David Cole initiated a new project on restoration of subalpine campsites in the Sawtooth Wilderness, Idaho, including an agreement with the University of Montana to study soil restoration.
- David Cole served on the steering committee for the Third International Conference on Monitoring and Management of Visitor Flows in Recreational and Protected Areas, held September 13-17, 2006 in Rapperswil, Switzerland
- Alan Watson received an award from the 8th World Wilderness Congress and the International Journal of Wilderness for international leadership in wilderness science, October 2005, Anchorage, Alaska.
- Alan Watson provided funding and mentoring to 4 international students (China, Brazil, Zambia and Canada) at the 8th World Wilderness Congress in Anchorage, Alaska.
- Alan Watson served as Editor of a special issue of the International Journal of Wilderness, "Anticipating change for wildland fire use in wilderness ecosystems," April 2006. Katie Knotek organized the symposium at the 8th World Wilderness Congress on which the special issue was based.
- Alan Watson provided consultation with Northwest Russia Association of National Parks and Zapovednik Directors, October 2005, Lake Ladoga, Russia.
- Alan Watson acted as Fulbright Senior Protected Area Specialist to the Komarov Botanical Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg and Moscow, Russia, October 2005.
- Alan Watson initiated the following three research projects in FY2006: "Factors of change influencing experiences and relationships with Wilderness: implications for stewardship," "Mapping personal and community meanings for planning and use of wildland fire and forest fuels treatments," and "GIS applications in mapping community meanings for fuel treatment analysis."
- Alan Watson completed the following two research projects in FY2006: "The Situk River, Yakutat Resident Study: A Report on Local Relationships to Place" (with Neal Christensen), and "Managing with Mindfulness: Learning from High Reliability Organizations to Improve Public Outreach for Fire and Fuels Management" (with Anne Black).
- Alan Watson was appointed RMRS National Fire Plan Portfolio head for Social Science.
- Peter Landres received the Forest Service National Wilderness Award for "Excellence in Wilderness Stewardship Research". Peter was awarded for his outstanding accomplishments in developing and implementing a national protocol for monitoring wilderness character. He was nominated by a group of national forest managers and the Washington Office.
- Peter Landres secured agreement from the National Wilderness Program Leaders from each of the four wilderness management agencies to work together developing recommendations for a single protocol to monitor wilderness character across the entire National Wilderness Preservation System. Additional project details are available on the Leopold Institute website at: http://leopold.wilderness.net/research/fprojects/F014.htm.
- Peter Landres completed the pilot testing of the new wilderness character monitoring protocol at the end of June 2006. Pilot testing was conducted in all nine Forest Service regions: on-site pilot testing was conducted at 4 locations, and off-site testing was conducted at 5 locations.
- Peter Landres completed the 230-page Technical Guide for Monitoring Selected Conditions Related to Wilderness Character.
- Peter Landres served as co-lead of the Steering Committee developing a new Arthur Carhart National Wilderness Training interagency course: "Natural and Cultural Resources Monitoring in Wilderness."
- Carol Miller initiated a three year Joint Fire Science funded project to improve and evaluate approaches for mapping burn probabilities in a quantitative wildland fire risk analysis framework. She will be lead PI on this three year collaborative project with Mark Finney (Rocky Mountain Research Station), Alan Ager (Pacific Northwest Research Station) and Marc Parisien (Canadian Forest Service/UC Berkeley).
- Carol Miller served on the Steering Committee for the "1st Fire Behavior and Fuels Conference," held in Portland, OR in March 2006 and had lead responsibility for organizing a special panel session on WFU.
- Carol Miller participated in Rocky Mountain Research Station's fire ecology research strategy meeting (Sep 20-22) during which a fire ecology research agenda was created for the Station. This agenda will likely be used to facilitate cross-station collaboration of National Fire Plan research.
- Carol Miller developed cooperative agreements for three projects to capture "deep smarts" of WFU (Wildland fire use) managers, to look at WUI (Wildland urban interface) and its growth relative to wilderness areas and WFU opportunities and to collect an additional year of post-fire data on stream communities.
- Carol Miller served on a committee for improving the understanding of Wilderness values by fire management staff so that suppression activities do not unnecessarily impact these values. A guidebook was drafted for Wilderness administrators to distribute to incident management teams.
- Steve Corn lead a workshop session on stressors of amphibian populations at the 2nd Alaska Amphibian Conference in Juneau, AK.
- Steve Corn presented a summary of his projects to the staff at Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center, Science Review in Bozeman, MT.
- Vita Wright met with Robert Bennetts, Inventory & Monitoring Coordinator for the National Park Service, to co-develop a concept paper on the Diffusion of Innovations theory and how it can help integrate the NPS Vital Signs Monitoring results into management.
- Katie Knotek completed the project, "High reliability organization of public involvement in agency decisions to accomplish wilderness fire management objectives."
- Katie Knotek developed new study plan, "Understanding landscape values and meanings for the planning and application of fuel treatment and fire management on the Flathead Indian Reservation, Montana."
- Anne Black developed and coordinated science delivery efforts for the National Science Synthesis Team. She developed and supervised FedSource, Enterprise Team and METI contracts and contractors to conduct project evaluation, website development, and web-based examples and training materials.
- Anne Black was a participant in the "Trunk Monkeys" community of practice to identify, employ and test effectiveness of HRO concepts on the ground.
- Anne Black was accepted into the 2006 Class of Leadership for Collective Intelligence training, Dialogos, Inc. which consists of 5 4-day workshops over 10 months.
Anne Black was appointed as RMRS National Fire Plan Science Portfolio head for Science Application and Delivery.
- Anne Black developed and supervised contracts/contractors (METI, LC Services) to conduct field, analysis and write-up for Joint Fire Science Program Social Mapping project.
- Brett Davis reviewed a manuscript for inclusion in 'The International Journal of Wilderness' as a guest associate editor.
Top of Page
RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Fiscal Year 2006
The following Research Highlights were submitted for the Rocky Mountain Research Station's 2006 Research Accomplishments Report:
The Importance of Monitoring Wilderness Character - Submitted by Peter Landres
Congress, in passing the 1964 Wilderness Act and all subsequent wilderness legislation, designated over 106 million acres of federal land as wilderness. The primary administrative mandate from these laws, and the policies of the four federal agencies who manage wilderness, is to preserve the wilderness character of this land. Despite over a hundred wilderness laws and long-standing agency policies, wilderness character has never been defined in terms that allow the agencies to evaluate management outcomes in preserving it. Even though wilderness field and program managers, scientists, non-government organizations, and even the Government Accountability Office have for years called for methods to track cumulative changes to wilderness character, until now there has been no definition of this central concept and no means for assessing how wilderness character is changing.
Scientists at the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Institute are leading the effort to define wilderness character, and develop new and practical methods to monitor how wilderness character is changing over time. In collaboration with wilderness managers and monitoring program leaders from across the nation, this project has developed a working definition for wilderness character, identified a set of indicators and measures to be monitored, developed a cost-effective approach for gathering and reporting the data, and secured funding for this development and pilot testing. The full range of managers, from wilderness field staff to program leaders to line officers, strongly supports development of this monitoring because they believe it is of fundamental importance to the preservation of wilderness. In addition, in the course of developing this monitoring, whole new lines of wilderness social science research are being explored.
This monitoring will allow, for the first time, the means for tracking trends in wilderness character. The benefits of this information are many, including 1) improving accountability by linking performance measures and outcomes of wilderness stewardship directly to the mandates of wilderness legislation and agency policy; 2) improving decisionmaking by knowing how specific attributes of wilderness character have changed in the past and how short-term projects are likely to affect these attributes; 3) improving the setting of priorities by knowing how different proposed actions are likely to affect wilderness character; 4) establishing legacy information on wilderness character that captures the institutional memory of wilderness managers so long-term and cumulative changes to wilderness character can be assessed; and 5) improving public trust and confidence in agency stewardship of wilderness.
More information on this new monitoring can be found in the publications "Monitoring selected conditions related to wilderness character: a national framework" RMRS GTR-151, downloadable at http://www.fs.fed.us/rm/pubs/rmrs_gtr151.html and "Developing indicators to monitor the 'outstanding opportunities' quality of wilderness character" in the International Journal of Wilderness, Volume 10, No. 3. Four additional articles in this same issue of the International Journal of Wilderness explore new social science research fields related to wilderness character and its stewardship. Additional information on this monitoring is available on the Leopold Institute's website at: http://leopold.wilderness.net/research/fprojects/F014.htm.
Visitor Experiences in High-Use Wildernesses in the Pacific Northwest - Submitted by David Cole
Wilderness use, particular in areas close to large metropolitan areas, is increasing and a large part of this growth comes from day use. There is considerable controversy about appropriate management of popular wilderness trails and destination areas. Much of the controversy stems from divergent interpretations of the language from the 1964 Wilderness Act that describes what wilderness should offer visitors: "outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation." There is growing debate about what causes more degradation of solitude or primitive and unconfined recreation: growing crowds of people or Forest Service imposed use limits and regulations, especially limits on day use. Tough, value-laden decisions must be made about appropriate management objectives regarding the experiential conditions wilderness should provide. This issue is a particular concern in the Pacific Northwest, where heavy recreation use occurs in wilderness areas close to large cities such as Seattle and Portland.
To inform these decisions, a major collaborative project was undertaken, beginning in 2002 between the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute (Dr. David Cole), the University of Idaho (Associate Professor Troy Hall) and the Pacific Northwest Region of the Forest Service (Regional Wilderness Specialist Susan Sater). A series of nine research and administrative studies were conducted in Forest Service wildernesses in Oregon and Washington between 2002 and 2005. Goals of the research were to understand the nature of human experience in wilderness and how experiences vary between heavily and lightly used places, as well as between day and overnight trips. Data were collected on what people experienced, their evaluations of those experiences and their opinions about what the Forest Service should do to manage wilderness experiences. Some people were interviewed at length while on their wilderness trips, while many more filled out questionnaires after their trip. At more popular trailheads, people were given questionnaires as they exited the wilderness. To collect information from users of more remote places, questionnaires were mailed to their homes. Finally, in addition to gathering information from on-site visitors of wilderness, information was also gathered at meetings of stakeholders particularly interested in wilderness. These meetings also provided an opportunity to study the degree to which visitor information was influenced by information presented at meetings or by group discussions about values.
This project was unique in recreation research for its high degree of collaboration between management and research as well as the ability to simultaneously apply multiple methods in many different wildernesses. Data collection has been completed but report writing has only begun. Results clearly show that visitor opinions about appropriate wilderness management are highly divergent and that providing visitors with information and venues for discussing and deliberating about management do not reduce polarization. Wilderness managers are going to have to make tough decisions about issues for which there is little consensus among the public. Experiential conditions in heavily-used places in wilderness are suboptimal. Visitors recognize that there are lots of people around, that there is more crowding than they prefer, that solitude is harder to find and more frequently interrupted. However, most visitors consider crowding to not be a very serious problem. They learn to cope with crowding, either though advanced planning (e.g. avoiding popular places on sunny weekends) or simply by rationalizing crowding as a necessary evil in such a beautiful place so close to the large cities where they live. When faced with the alternative of Forest Service imposed use limits, most visitors appear inclined to prefer that they be allowed to adapt and adjust to conditions, to be free to choose whether or not to visit a crowded place. Additional information about these studies and resultant reports are available on the Leopold Institute's website at: http://leopold.wilderness.net/research/fprojects/F007_B.htm.
Managing the Unexpected in Public Outreach for Fire and Fuels Management - Submitted by Katie Knotek
Many unexpected events can occur when conducting public outreach for fire and fuels management, such as contentious public meetings, withdrawal of key publics from participation, harassment of personnel within the organization, and litigation. To reduce the likelihood of such events occurring, wildland fire management organizations need some framework to guide their public outreach. Social scientists from the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute drew upon the work of Weick and Sutcliffe (Managing the Unexpected: Assuring High Performance in an Age of Complexity, 2001) and their theory on managing with mindfulness to develop and test a potential framework to meet this need.
The framework includes five central mindfulness processes that can be applied to planning and conducting public outreach: 1) recognize potential barriers to accomplishment of management objectives, 2) resist simplification of information or interpretations, 3) ensure situational awareness of events as they occur, 4) be prepared to respond to and recover from unexpected events, and 5) call upon appropriate expertise in decision-making and management efforts. Scientists tested the usefulness and applicability of the framework using, as a case study, the USDA Forest Service's (USFS) public outreach efforts conducted during the planning and implementation of the South Fork of the Sun River Prescribed Burn (a multi-phase operation being implemented in the Scapegoat Wilderness, Montana). If the framework could be used to document and understand the effectiveness of the agency's public outreach, then it may be useful in making future efforts related to fire and fuels management more effective.
In-depth interviews were conducted with a sample of agency representatives on the Lewis and Clark National Forest and non-agency public representatives from local communities who were aware of and/or participated in this public outreach (e.g., private landowners, outfitter/guides, local recreationists, non-governmental organization representatives, etc.) to document the agency's efforts. In the interviews, both agency and public representatives discussed at length such things as public meetings, newspaper articles, one-on-one contacts with private landowners, internal agency briefings, informational mailings, briefings to key publics (county commissioners, governor's staff, media), and other such efforts utilized by the agency.
Analysis of these specific actions used by the agency and perceptions of their effectiveness provided insight into the applicability of the five central mindfulness processes. For example, public representatives acknowledged the value of the agency's efforts to engage the public early on in the planning of the prescribed burn, which indicated the agency recognized and responded to a possible barrier to accomplishment of its public outreach objectives. Through the framework, it was also possible to document and understand how some actions or inactions by the agency could have benefited from more attention to the mindfulness processes. For example, some public representatives felt that specific personal concerns were not addressed by the agency, which indicated the agency might have simplified some information received through public outreach. Thus, use of the framework provided the agency with information on how it might continue to foster or improve its mindfulness when conducting public outreach for fire and fuels management.
This research provides an example of a framework that can be used to document and understand the effectiveness of an organization's outreach efforts. As a case study, the methods and results of the research provide a means of comparison to additional cases and a tool for other land management agencies and units. Just as it was used in this study to evaluate and improve upon the USFS's (specifically the Lewis and Clark National Forest's) public outreach efforts, the framework of mindfulness processes can be similarly utilized by other wildland fire management organizations to guide their performance in planning and conducting public outreach for similar fire and fuels management project
The research was presented to fire and fuels scientists and managers at the 1st Fire Behavior and Fuels Conference: Fuels Management - How to Measure Success and will be detailed in the article, "Organizational characteristics that contribute to success in engaging the public to accomplish fuels management at the wilderness/non-wilderness interface," published in the conference proceedings. The research was also presented to Public Information Officers at the 2006 Northern Rockies Incident Management Teams Meeting and to Public Affairs Officers at the 2006 Northern Region Public Affairs Conference. The final project report is available on the Leopold Institute's website at: http://leopold.wilderness.net/unpublished/UNP110.pdf.
Describing wilderness experiences for backcountry visitors in Denali National Park, Alaska - Submitted by Alan Watson
Scientists at the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute have an established record of helping managers and planners from all the federal land management agencies understand critical elements of experiences desired by the public visiting protected wildlands. The National Park Service has a national mandate to conserve scenery, natural and historic objects, and wildlife to provide for the enjoyment of National Parks in a manner as will leave them unimpaired for future generations. In Alaska, as a result of language in the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, recreation visitors to the expanded Denali National Park and Preserve are expected to receive a wilderness recreation experience in both wilderness and protected backcountry. Managers encountered difficulty trying to define management goals for providing an appropriate type of experience at very remote glaciers where people congregate, like landing areas where day visitor flightseers want to experience this remote location and mountain climbers and cross-country skiers are preparing for or leaving from very intense multi-day visits to very challenging places in the Park.
The Ruth Amphitheater, Kahiltna Base Camp, and the Pika, Buckskin, and Eldridge Glaciers in Denali National Park and Preserve have exceptional scenic values, provide access to some world renowned climbing destinations, and are the primary destination for air taxis and scenic airplane tours in the Park. Recreational visitation to these areas has grown dramatically in recent years. For example, scenic landings in the Ruth Amphitheater increased from 220 in 1991 to 1,800 in 2001. The number of climbers on Mount McKinley has doubled in the last 25 years with 659 attempts to summit in 1980 and 1,340 in 2006. This study provides information to: 1) assist park managers understand the factors influencing visitor experiences at these backcountry sites, and 2) support selection of management actions that reduce user conflicts and improve visitor experiences in these high use, but remote areas.
Qualitative interviews with dayusers, skiers, mountain climbers and air taxi operators provided substantial insight into some of the dimensions of experiences the Park managers may want to try to protect. A follow-up quantitative survey of day and overnight users allowed further refinement of definitions of these experience elements and understand some of the things that influence them. For example, about 30 percent of the day users indicated that the number of planes on the glacier they landed on did not matter to them, and just under half said that the number of planes passing overhead did not matter to them. Almost half indicated that the number of large dayuse groups on the glacier did not matter to them. About 29 percent of multi-day users felt that other climbing groups had a negative influence on their experiences - about the same number who felt that the number of aircraft passing overhead had a negative influence on them. About one-fifth thought the number of people camped by them, either away from the landing area or at the landing area, had a negative influence on their experiences. Less than half reported having negative aspects of the experience attributable to the numbers of climbers or flightseers they saw at the base camp landing area. The air taxi operators tended to have a positive influence on 84 percent of multi-day visitor experiences, 77 percent felt the members of their group improved their visit, and around two-thirds tended to evaluate interaction with management as a positive aspect of their experience. In research, we increased our understanding of not only who the visitors are, but also who the pilots are that provide access to backcountry glaciers for both day and multi-day users. We also learned a great deal about the experiences day users and multi-day users receive while in the backcountry, as well as greater understanding of the things that influence those experiences. Through this research we are also better able to understand how people respond to some specific things we expect them to encounter in the backcountry, and their reaction to possible management actions to address human impacts there.
Top of Page
SUMMARY OF ACCOMPLISHMENTS
The following CRIS progress reports were submitted documenting accomplishments for the Leopold Institute's 5 Problem Areas:
Problem Area 1 - Recreation:
During FY2006, Leopold Institute scientists made substantial progress in addressing the broad area of understanding the effects of recreation use and recreation management strategies on wilderness attributes and visitor experiences. David Cole's research efforts included studies of visitors to high-use wildernesses in Oregon and Washington for which field work was completed and reports have been written for seven of nine coordinated studies. This work has improved understanding of the nature of visitor experiences, visitor evaluations of those experiences, how visitors cope with the situations they encounter and visitors' management preferences. It is setting the stage for development of a vision, including establishment of indicators and standards, for wilderness recreation management in the face of increasing wilderness use, particularly in areas close to metropolitan centers. Alan Watson's research efforts in Denali National Park & Preserve focused on defining experiences and influences on experiences of climbers of Mt. McKinley and flightseers who landed on glaciers in the Denali backcountry. This research described major elements of experiences there and potential indicators for protecting experiences. Research in the Bob Marshall Wilderness updated studies of trends in visit and visitor characteristics and explored the effects of fire on visits, visitors and their support for wildland fire use policies. Progress was also made in documenting trends in ecological impact in different wildernesses and effective means of restoring damaged recreation sites. Three publications document the effectiveness of varied treatments in restoring damaged soil and vegetation on subalpine campsites in the Eagle Cap Wilderness. Scarification, soil amendments and planting all accelerate recovery rates.
Impact Statement: The growing importance of understanding the human dimension implications of natural resource management decisions has made this research more critical than ever. This research is being used to design monitoring programs, establish objectives for managing backcountry and wilderness zones, and to understand likely public response to proposed management actions.
Problem Area 2 - Relationships:
During FY2006, Institute scientists and cooperators published several articles on this topic, attempting to expand understanding of the concept of relational marketing in the public sector and providing improved methods for understanding stakeholder response to proposed management actions. An important publication described the potential for design and implementation of a monitoring program that focuses on change in relationships with wilderness affected by management actions and response to management actions influenced by relationships with wilderness. This monitoring guidance paper was expanded beyond the original public purpose marketing elements of trust, commitment, and perceptions of social responsibility to include inventory and monitoring of the meanings people ascribe to wilderness and other wildlands. Other publications (published and in press) on trust were aimed at development of effective, efficient monitoring tools and greater understanding of how trust is influenced by agency actions or inactions. Besides research to understand relationships with the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, scientists studied relationships sports anglers, subsistence users, commercial fisheries, and local residents held with the Situk River on the Tongass National Forest. This project was cooperative with the Alaska Department of Natural Resources, the Alaska Department of Fish & Game, the Tongass National Forest and the Tlingit Tribe of Yakutat, Alaska. A large project was initiated in 2006 to understand not only how visit and visitor characteristics are changing at the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota, but also why these things are changing. Specific interest is in understanding how charging user fees, reducing group size limits, prescribed fire policies, technology advances and demographics within the region influence visitor experiences and relationships between local communities and wilderness. Another project initiated in 2006 is a cooperative consultation with the Confederated Salish & Kootenai Tribes in Montana to assist them in mapping the meanings community members attach to the Mission Mountain Tribal Wilderness and adjoining Tribal Buffer Zone, in order to provide public input into fire and fuels management decisions.
Impact Statement: This work has provided science mediation in controversial planning decisions by bringing multiple organizations and communities together to agree on information needs, listen to scientific findings and discuss implications for management decisions on the Tongass and Bitterroot National Forests. This work has added conceptual frameworks for monitoring the relationship between the public and public wildlands in a way that management can be evaluated in terms of protecting or restoring these relationships, e.g., establishing baselines and monitoring levels of trust. This work has also contributed new methodologies for illustrating and considering human relationships with public wildlands in landscape level fuel treatment decisions.
Problem Area 3 - Fire:
Our fire research continues to include a mixture of in-house and cooperative projects that are jointly funded by the NFP and JFSP. Carol Miller provides leadership for the program, which is conducted by a cross-disciplinary team of biologists, ecologists, social scientists, and science delivery experts. These researchers are using wilderness to learn how to use fire as a cost-effective management strategy that is socially acceptable and beneficial to natural ecosystems. This year significant accomplishments were made in efforts to better understand the social and ecological consequences of fire and fuels management strategies. We also were involved in substantial science delivery activities:
- We continued work on a project to develop methods to quantify and track the cumulative consequences of past suppression decisions ('Sequential Effects') and to create a 'Map Library' of potential fire spread and effects from future ignitions. Fire behavior models will determine where fires would have spread and what effects (including smoke production) would have resulted, had they not been suppressed. The Map Library portion of the project was delivered to Park management, providing valuable information to support the decision whether or not to suppress future ignitions. This research is important because managers need to understand the effects of fire management strategies on fire regimes, vegetation and fuel conditions, and socio-economic trade-offs over time.
- New field research was initiated to assess the establishment and spread of non-indigenous invasive plants following wildland fire in remote wilderness settings. Naturally-ignited fire is allowed to play its natural role in wilderness, but the consequences of fire on the occurrence of non-indigenous invasive plants in areas remote from known source populations is completely unknown. This research will provide spatially-explicit, empirically-based statistical models for predicting the post-fire occurrence of non-indigenous invasive plants in wilderness. The results of this research aim to improve the detection and evaluation of potential risks from non-indigenous invasive plants following fire in wilderness, in turn suggesting priorities for control and eradication of this important threat to wilderness.
- We have examined the social and historical factors leading to the implementation of a large prescribed fire in the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex in Western Montana. We interviewed management staff and community members living in and around the towns of Choteau and Augusta, MT to understand how the Forest Service organized public involvement and how specific actions influenced participant and management perceptions of successful or unsuccessful application of mindfulness principles. This case study identified effective communication and collaboration techniques that can be applied to other situations. Results have been used to clarify how high reliability organizing principles can improve the effectiveness of the agency when engaging the public in decisions to accomplish fire and fuels management objectives.
- Questions about attitudes toward management-ignited fire were included in a survey of recreation visitors to the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex. Local visitors from the counties adjacent to the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex were more supportive than distant visitors of management-ignited fires to both reduce chances of fire escaping to non-wilderness lands and to restore the natural role of fire in wilderness. This research is important because although Wildland Fire Use is the most cost-effective fuel management strategy in large wilderness areas, its success will depend on public support and minimizing conflicts with visitors.
- One of the most important constraints on a manager's ability to implement wildland fire use is the proximity to values at risk in the wildland urban interface. A new collaborative project
(North Central Research Station, Oregon State University) was launched to examine the implications of increasing housing densities in the wildland urban interface on the feasibility of wildland fire use.
- A new project initiated in 2006 will examine how current and recent past wildland fire policies in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness have influenced the relationships regional communities have with this Wilderness. A survey of recreation visitors will also provide understanding about how fuel accumulations from blowdowns, prescribed fire and wildland fire use activities in the Boundary Waters is affecting route choices, enjoyment of wilderness as wilderness, and visitor experiences.
- Successful cost-effective restoration of fire to fire-adapted ecosystems, requires that the fire community manage fire safely and reliably. We completed an annotated bibliography, Organizational Management Tools for Wildland and Prescribed Fire Managers.
- As Wildland Fire Use is added to the fuel managers' toolbox for lands outside of wilderness, the need for tools that allow managers to comprehensively assess tradeoffs among the risks and benefits of fire in a quantitative, actuarial sense is rapidly increasing. A collaborative project (RWU-4401, PNW-Wildland Threat Center, UC Berkeley, Canadian Forest Service) was launched to compare and evaluate burn probability modeling approaches for use in an operational risk analysis framework. In addition, a framework for assessing fires' positive, neutral and negative impacts to any resource was extended to aquatic systems (collaboration with RWU-4353).
Impact Statement: This research is important because sustainable fire management needs to include wildland fire use (WFU) and other non-aggressive management responses to fire. The lessons learned from applying WFU in large, remote wilderness areas can be translated to the adjacent front country and to smaller wilderness areas. This research is improving the quality and consistency of fire and fuels management decisions and helping managers devise effective strategies that capitalize on the opportunities for WFU within and outside wilderness.
Problem Area 4 - Wilderness in Larger Systems:
Element 4a. Invasive species: During FY2006 greenhouse experiments were completed by Peter Landres and University of Montana cooperator Ray Callaway on the effects of fire-produced charcoal on the germination and establishment of spotted knapweed seeds, and the effects of this charcoal on mediating the effect of knapweed-produced allelopathic herbicide on the establishment and growth of native bunchgrasses. During the 2006 field season, Landres initiated new field research to document the occurrence of non-indigenous invasive in remote wilderness backcountry areas. To develop empirically-based statistical models for predicting the occurrence of the invasive plants in remote backcountry areas, new field methodologies were developed. Landres also co-organized a session on the restoration of Whitebark pine in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem following invasion of the nonnative Whitebark pine blister rust.
David Pilliod, former Leopold Institute post-doctoral fellow, is the lead author on a synthesis paper in preparation that uses a meta analysis of several studies in the northern Rocky Mountains and Pacific Northwest to examine effects of trout on occurrence of amphibians at multiple scales.
Element 4b. Global change impacts on wildlife: Steve Corn, with funding from USGS and the National Park Service and in collaboration with scientists from Idaho State University and the USGS Fort Collins Science Center, surveyed 543 individual wetlands in 65 small watersheds in Rocky Mountain, Yellowstone, Grand Teton, and Glacier National Parks. Naïve and estimated occupancies of amphibian species in 2006 continue to reflect a trend of decreasing occupancy from north to south. As expected, watershed occupancy is higher than wetland occupancy and probably provides the best method for tracking trends of uncommon species, such as boreal toads.
Steve Corn presented an invited paper, Amphibians and Climate Change, at MtnClim 2006, the annual meeting of the Consortium for Integrated Climate Research on Western Mountains.
Steve Corn published a paper describing effects on tailed frogs in Canadian Journal of Zoology, and a paper describing effects of the 2001 Moose fire on pond-breeding species is currently in review at Ecological Applications. Another paper describing the effects of the Moose Fire on the chemistry and temperature of wetlands is in the USGS review process and will be submitted to the journal Wetlands.
A proposal from Steve Corn and Sophie St.-Hilaire (Idaho State University) was funded through the USGS/NPS Park Oriented Biological Support Program. The goals of this study are to determine the prevalence of chytrid fungus in Grand Teton National Park and the comparable pathogenicity of locally-cultured isolates of the fungus to boreal toads. Experiments are underway to determine what environmental conditions are necessary to result in mortality associated with this fungal agent.
Element 4c. Wilderness water: Alan Watson completed an investigation of the impacts and benefits of wilderness dams in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, which resulted in one publication that explains the history of these dams, perceptions of local people and experts about the ecological disruption effects and hydrologic connections with quality of life and economic pursuits of adjacent communities.
Element 4d. Wilderness monitoring protocols: Peter Landres led completion of the 230-page Technical Guide for Monitoring Selected Conditions Related to Wilderness Character that was written by a team of over 40 agency resource specialists, and agency and university scientists. Landres received the Forest Service National Wilderness Research Application award for his work developing wilderness character monitoring. Landres co-led pilot testing of this monitoring protocol in all nine Forest Service regions, with $270,000 received from the National Forest Systems Inventory and Monitoring program to conduct this testing. Landres co-led the final review all pilot test results leading to the final decisions about the Technical Guide, which will be completed in early FY2007. Also during FY2006, Landres was selected to chair a new interagency team (Bureau of Land Management, US Fish and Wildlife Service, Forest Service, and National Park Service) with responsibility to develop recommendations for monitoring wilderness character across the entire National Wilderness Preservation System. Landres organized a session on "A practical approach to monitoring wilderness character with application to Alaska and other countries" at the 8th World Wilderness Congress.
Alan Watson, working with scientists and managers of Parks Canada, extended research to develop new methods to identify major elements of wilderness visitor experiences and understand major factors of influence on them. These factors of influence, and sometimes the experience dimensions themselves, provide the foundation for selection of indicators and prescription of monitoring to protect human experiences in wilderness. This work resulted in a workshop in Canada bringing together U.S. and Canada managers and scientists, as well as a workshop proceedings that is in press.
Impact Statement: All wildernesses are impacted by regional (and global) threats, and research by Leopold Institute scientists is uniquely focusing on wilderness ecological and social values at risk from these threats. This research will help managers understand the potential consequences from these threats as well as the potential consequences from alternative management decisions taken to mitigate them.
Problem Area 5 - Science Application & Delivery:
The Institute's Research Application Program includes activities aimed at current research delivery and application as well as efforts to understand and improve research delivery and application processes. The program is jointly funded by the RMRS, BLM, and FWS. Vita Wright provides leadership for the program, which is conducted by the program leader, as well as staff including a web developer and part-time technical assistance by various University of Montana students. This year, accomplishments were made to gain an understanding of influences to the use of science by federal agency managers and in synthesizing literature for wildlife management and fire management in wilderness. We also worked with staff in all the Leopold Institute program areas to deliver science using Internet resources. In addition to the accomplishments reported here, research delivery and application accomplishments by Institute scientists are reported in each program area.
- Studied the personal and organizational communication literature, and prepared and submitted the paper, Communication barriers to applying federal research in support of land management in the United States, to the proceedings of the International Conference on Transfer of Forest Science Knowledge & Technology. This paper explores the potential for misunderstanding between research communicators and managers, and emphasizes the need to understand audiences prior to communicating research results. The manuscript has been reviewed and accepted, and will be published in FY07.
- At the request of the National Park Service Inventory & Monitoring Program, co-authored a concept paper, Diffusion of innovation: a theoretical framework for understanding how scientific knowledge and tools are adopted by managers. This paper will appear on a web site the NPS is developing to facilitate science integration.
- Published the results of a meeting with National Park Service natural resource specialists and managers we organized to gather perspectives on barriers to the use of new knowledge and tools, and how to overcome these barriers, within the National Park Service. The publication, Overcoming barriers to the use of science in National Parks (session summary), was included in the George Wright Society Conference proceedings.
- Completed a search for relevant wildlife and recreation publications and finalized the manuscript, Backcountry recreation impacts to terrestrial wildlife: an annotated reading list. This bibliography will help backcountry wildlife and recreation managers cross disciplinary boundaries to understand the issues each discipline must balance in order to both provide recreational experiences and minimize impacts to wildlife. It will be published as a Rocky Mountain Research Station General Technical Report in FY07.
- Finalized the manuscript, Using Social Science to Understand and Improve Wildland Fire Organizations: An Annotated Reading List, which includes knowledge from several social science disciplines as it relates to fire safety. This knowledge will be used in trainings to improve organizational culture and practices related to firefighter safety and prescribed fire management, thus reducing the potential for fire escapes and loss of life. This bibliography will be published as a Rocky Mountain Research Station General Technical Report in FY07.
- Expanded ALWRI Online Resources to provide access to research through the following Project Details & Resources Pages. These web pages provide the latest knowledge and tools needed to address challenging fire, recreation, and social issues. They are available at: http://leopold.wilderness.net/research/fprojects.htm
- Fire Effects Planning Framework [F005]
- Learning from the past: retrospective analyses of fire behavior in Yosemite and Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Parks [F006]
- Visitor experiences in wilderness: applications to management of heavily-used wildernesses and day users [F007]
- Campsite restoration techniques [F008]
- Computer simulation modeling of recreation use: developing a practical management tool [F009]
- Baseline data collection and monitoring: trends in recreation use and impacts [F010]
- Wilderness recreation management techniques: compiling and integrating scientific and experiential knowledge [F011]
- Recreation ecology research: expanding, synthesizing and sharing knowledge [F012]
- Dilemmas of wilderness management: exploring conflicting values [F013]
- Wilderness Character Monitoring [F014]
- Technical & Social Influences to the success of science delivery and application [F016]
Impact Statement: This program is important because, in order to obtain the full investment of research dollars, researchers and research communicators need to effectively transfer scientific knowledge and tools to land managers so they can apply them to planning and management objectives.
Top of Page
|
