RECREATION ALLOCATIONS ON NATIONAL FORESTS: THE CLAIMS AND FRAMES OF RECREATIONISTS

While demand for outdoor recreation experiences on national forests is increasing, many existing recreation allocations on national forests are outdated or jeopardize the environment. Accordingly, the U.S. Forest Service is revisiting recreation allocations on many national forests. The Forest Service is not guided by any clear policy regarding the appropriate method or rationale for making allocations between incompatible experience opportunities, or what criteria should be considered in allocating particular trails and areas. Instead individual decisionmakers must make judgments between competing claims advanced by different types of recreationists. This project was designed to facilitate understanding of the claims that recreationists make to national forests, in an attempt provide decisionmakers and stakeholders a way to think clearly about the foundations and implications of the claims that they make and hear. To accomplish this, I executed a discourse analysis case study on the Gallatin National Forest. In addition to contextual research, I conducted, coded, and analyzed semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 35 hikers and off-road vehicle (ORV) drivers in south-central Montana. The study indicated that the claims and views of hikers and ORV drivers differed in a number of important ways. First, most hikers stated that national forests should be managed to protect the natural environment, while most ORV drivers stated that the national forests should be managed for multiple uses, including ORV driving. Second, most hikers claimed that ORV impacts on the natural environment are significant enough to necessitate reductions in allocations to driving; most ORV drivers believed the impacts of ORVs and other types of forest recreation to be similar and nonsignificant. While specific claims varied within the two groups, hikers and ORV drivers embedded their claims in consistent and contrasting narratives which elided the contradictions and limitations of specific claims to support general propositions to the effect that allocation to their use should be prioritized. Judicious allocation of national forest recreation opportunities depends upon improved understanding of and articulation of claims. This study offers a conceptual framework for considering claims with the hope of improving the coherency, transparency, credibility, and wisdom of recreation allocations

Distance Education Strategy: Mental Models and Strategic Choices

What issues do distance education (DE) leaders believe will influence the future of DE? What are their colleges’ DE strategies? This qualitative study compares DE strategic thinking and strategic choices at three community colleges. Two propositions are investigated: (1) each college’s DE leaders use common strategic mental models (ways of thinking about key environmental issues and relationships), and (2) DE leaders from the three colleges employ common industry-level strategic mental models. The major findings are: (1) strategic beliefs are more varied than expected; (2) strategic choices address common DE issues but are tailored to local contexts; and (3) leaders’ beliefs and college strategic choices are aligned

Trophic polymorphism in a terrestrial salamander

Question: Does habitat heterogeneity promote trophic polymorphism in a terrestrial salamander? Hypothesis: Eastern red-backed salamanders (Plethodon cinereus) in upland and lowland habitats differ morphologically because their prey’s size differs between those habitats. Field site: Five mature hardwood forests in central New York and northern Pennsylvania, USA, with known differences in diet between upland and lowland habitats. Methods: We collected animals and examined their stomach contents and their cranial morphology, the latter with digital stereomicroscope images and morphometric methods. Results: We found morphological differences between upland and lowland salamanders, although there was a considerable phenotypic range for both habitats. Lowland salamanders generally had relatively shorter heads and a lower jaw/head ratio, and upland salamanders generally had the converse. Within and among habitats, cranial morphology was associated with diet, where salamanders with lowland-like morphology consumed more large prey and fewer small prey, and salamanders with upland-like morphology consumed the converse. Conclusions: The observed trophic polymorphism and association with food use within populations suggests that this variation may accentuate variation at larger scales, and may play an important role in diversification within the genus

Beyond Flux-Limited Diffusion: Parallel Algorithms for Multidimensional Radiation Hydrodynamics

This paper presents a new code for performing multidimensional radiation hydrodynamic (RHD) simulations on parallel computers involving anisotropic radiation fields and nonequilibrium effects. The radiation evolution modules described here encapsulate the physics provided by the serial algorithm of Stone et. al (ApJSupp, vol 80, pp. 819-845), but add new functionality with regard to physics and numerics. Physics enhancments include the addition of time dependence to the computation of the variable tensor Eddington factor (VTEF) closure term, and a matter-radiation coupling scheme which is particularly robust for nonequilibrium problems. Numerical highlights include a discussion of how our code is implemented for parallel execution and a description of our scalable linear solver module. We present a suite of numerical tests from which the virtues and vices of our method may be gleaned; these include nonequilibrium Marshak waves, 2-D "shadow" tests showing the one-sided illumination of an opaque cloud, and full RHD+VTEF simulations of radiating shocks. We conclude that radiation moment solutions closed with variable tensor Eddington factors show a dramatic qualitative improvement over results obtained with flux-limited diffusion, and further that this approach has a bright future in the context of parallel RHD simulations in astrophysics.Comment: 57 pages (including 18 eps figures); submitted to the ApJ Supplement; prepared with AASTEX 5.