Mapping Wilderness Character in Adams County, Pennsylvania

The spatial trends in wilderness character in Adams County, Pennsylvania were examined to evaluate how influenced specific areas are impacted by human activity and development. Indicators of wilderness character were selected as natural, untrammelled, undeveloped, along with solitude and unconfined recreation by the Death Valley National Park staff in which a 0-4 ranking system was based upon to portray a range of most degraded to optimal land. This was executed through examination of factors such as abundance of biodiversity and human development within the given area before a Monte Carlo simulation was run to show sensitivity of change. It was found that overall wilderness quality is most optimal along the Michaux Forest boundary and small sections of land on the southwestern and eastern edge of Adams County. Areas that are most sensitive to a change in the weights of wilderness character factors are small sections of land throughout the middle areas of Adams County along the roads while areas of land that are least sensitive to change are mainly the areas associated with the Michaux Forest boundary along the northwestern parts of Adam’s County. It was concluded that an increase in human interaction tends to lead to land that is more degraded and misused for infrastructure purposes

Wilderness attribute mapping in the United Kingdom

A wilderness continuum concept can identify the wilder areas of Britain. Geographical Information Systems are used to present information on these areas and solicit public opinion as to which factors are perceived to be important wilderness quality indicators. Consensus maps are compiled from a composite of individual responses and the results compared to Britain’s network of protected areas

GIS and Introductory Environmental Engineering: A Way to Fold GIS into an Already-Existing Course

The use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) was implemented in the upper-division undergraduate technical elective Introduction to Environmental Engineering at Harvey Mudd College. Students integrated technical engineering skills, newly-learned geographical information system (GIS) skills, and the engineering design process, all in the context of the design of a debris flow barrier for a wilderness land parcel acquired by a local conservancy group. Junior and senior general engineering students, the majority of whom had no experience with GIS, were taught ArcGIS (a GIS mapping program) in the context of an Introductory Environmental Engineering course. Students learned how to map locations, find and download geo-encoded data, and join data layers, in order to graphically present toxic release hazards near their home towns. ArcGIS skills and knowledge were assessed through completion of homework problems, and through the students’ use of GIS data, software, and mapping during the design of a debris flow barrier for a local wilderness land parcel. Assignment #1 consisted of students learning how to map and characterize toxic releases near their hometowns; these data were downloaded into a spreadsheet for later use in the ArcGIS software package. In Assignment #2, the students used ArcGIS to analyze these data for the potential of water, soil, and atmospheric transport. In addition to the homework assignments, the student team completed a team-based design project involving the characterization of the wilderness site; acquiring relevant GIS data; and studying the physics of debris flow. The team produced alternative designs for the barrier and chose the best design by applying design metrics. The alternative designs and rationale for the chosen design were presented to the board of directors of the local conservancy group. Pre- and post-assessment data were gathered to analyze the success of the learning objectives. The design project in particular was useful in evaluating the students’ skill, knowledge and ease in using the GIS tools for analysis of the wilderness land parcel

Crop expansion and conservation priorities in tropical countries

Expansion of cropland in tropical countries is one of the principal causes of biodiversity loss, and threatens to undermine progress towards meeting the Aichi Biodiversity Targets. To understand this threat better, we analysed data on crop distribution and expansion in 128 tropical countries, assessed changes in area of the main crops and mapped overlaps between conservation priorities and cultivation potential. Rice was the single crop grown over the largest area, especially in tropical forest biomes. Cropland in tropical countries expanded by c. 48,000 km2 per year from 1999–2008. The countries which added the greatest area of new cropland were Nigeria, Indonesia, Ethiopia, Sudan and Brazil. Soybeans and maize are the crops which expanded most in absolute area. Other crops with large increases included rice, sorghum, oil palm, beans, sugar cane, cow peas, wheat and cassava. Areas of high cultivation potential—while bearing in mind that political and socio-economic conditions can be as influential as biophysical ones—may be vulnerable to conversion in the future. These include some priority areas for biodiversity conservation in tropical countries (e.g., Frontier Forests and High Biodiversity Wilderness Areas), which have previously been identified as having ‘low vulnerability’, in particular in central Africa and northern Australia. There are also many other smaller areas which are important for biodiversity and which have high cultivation potential (e.g., in the fringes of the Amazon basin, in the Paraguayan Chaco, and in the savanna woodlands of the Sahel and East Africa). We highlight the urgent need for more effective sustainability standards and policies addressing both production and consumption of tropical commodities, including robust land-use planning in agricultural frontiers, establishment of new protected areas or REDD+ projects in places agriculture has not yet reached, and reduction or elimination of incentives for land-demanding bioenergy feedstock

Inventory of available data elements for the San Bernardino, California region

Elements of data sets that are available to be integrated for the San Bernardino vertical data integration project are given. Each of the data sets has specified for it the ownership, validity, accuracy and technical requirements for integration

Ours to Displace, Ours to Protect : The Borderlands of American Indian Histories, Whiteness, and the Wilderness Ideal

\u27 Ours to Displace, Ours to Protect : The Borderlands of American Indian Histories, Whiteness, and the Wilderness Ideal\u27 is featured in the journal Tapestries: Interwoven voices of local and global identities, volume 4

Landscape History and Theory: from Subject Matter to Analytic Tool

This essay explores how landscape history can engage methodologically with the adjacent disciplines of art history and visual/cultural studies. Central to the methodological problem is the mapping of the beholder � spatially, temporally and phenomenologically. In this mapping process, landscape history is transformed from subject matter to analytical tool. As a result, landscape history no longer simply imports and applies ideas from other disciplines but develops its own methodologies to engage and influence them. Landscape history, like art history, thereby takes on a creative cultural presence. Through that process, landscape architecture and garden design regain the cultural power now carried by the arts and museum studies, and has an effect on the innovative capabilities of contemporary landscape design

‘Wild land’: a concept in search of space

This paper sets out the general background context surrounding the issue of wild land in Scotland. It explores definitions of wild land and related concepts, identifies key issues associated with wild land in Scotland, and explores the question of the desirability of designating areas as wild land for Scotland. There is increasing interest in the concept of ‘wild land’, ‘wildness’, or ‘wilderness’ in Scotland, other parts of the UK and Europe. Changes in agricultural policy are leading to land abandonment in several European Union member states and in some cases ‘re-wilding’ is taking place with little or no managerial input from humans. These events have led to renewed interest across Europe in setting aside land with minimal management to create ‘wild’ areas. There has been either interest or activity, not always in the public sector, in Italy, Spain, Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and the Netherlands in exploring and establishing some form of wild land area. Many of these are relatively small, with evidence of recent human activity, and, as such, are quite distinct from the concept of ‘wilderness’, which has been so influential in certain parts of the world (such as North America) in influencing the designation of areas of land for minimal management. In contrast there are the large areas of northern Scandinavia, which still contain ‘wilderness-like’ qualities, and to some extent are preserved in the wilderness areas and national parks of Finland, Sweden and Norway. Unfortunately, the terms ‘wild land’, ‘wildness’, ‘wilderness’, come with an enormous amount of associated cultural baggage, resulting in argument and conflict over definitions, purpose, and management of potential wild land or wilderness areas. The aim of this paper is to unpack some of that baggage and clarify the key issues in the current discussions on wild land taking place in Scotland