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WILDERNESS CHARACTER MONITORING

Arthur Carhart National Wilderness Training Center, March 2012

Wilderness Character Webinar #4

KEY REVIEW POINTS

• Wilderness character is composed of five qualities that are comprehensive, nationally consistent, and locally applied

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• This framework and language allows agency staff to discuss, evaluate, and make more informed and transparent decisions

• These ideas are relatively new, so HOW they are implemented will likely improve over time

THE STEWARDSHIP TASK:PRESERVE WILDERNESS CHARACTER

Modern Human Impact

Wild

erne

ss

Cha

ract

er

MORELESS

MO

RE

LES

S

State of wilderness character at the time of Congressional designation or agency study

Our task is to sustain or

improve this state

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HOW DO WE KNOW IF WE ARE PRESERVING WILDERNESS CHARACTER?

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• Hierarchically organized

• Trend is assessed from change within a wilderness

• Balances national consistency with local flexibility and relevance because every wilderness is part of the National Wilderness Preservation System, yet is also unique

BALANCING NATIONAL CONSISTENCY WITH LOCAL FLEXIBILITY

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• Trend for each measure is assessed as “improving,” “stable,” or “degrading”

• Many measures are simple counts over a 5-year time period, with “significant change” defined locally

• Baseline for evaluating change is the time of wilderness designation or agency study (if data exist) or the first time this monitoring is conducted

• Every wilderness assesses trend in these qualities using at least one measure per indicator

• Consistent rules used to roll up measure trends to assess trend for the indicator, quality, and wilderness character once every 5 years

RULES FOR SYNTHESIZING TRENDS • Cannot combine the data from different measures• Can combine the trend from different measures

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COMPILING TRENDS WITHIN A REGIONAND ACROSS THE NATION

Can combine the trend from different wildernesses within a region, agency, and NWPS to derive a percent of wildernesses for which wilderness character is preserved and degrading 12

Death Valley Wilderness

Map built from equally weighted qualities composed of 41 weighted input variables

NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN MONITORING: MAPPING WILDERNESS CHARACTER

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Undeveloped

Natural Solitude

Untrammeled

NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN MONITORING: INTERAGENCY, ONLINE DATABASE

• Still in development• Goals: library of measures; easy data entry; standard

one-button reporting for unit, region, nation; repository

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QUESTIONS?