Category: Classes I Teach

Sunrise vistas are among the most popular activity sites at national forests and parks; the reward-to-effort ratio is typically very high. On the way to a comfortable perch, visitors can cause crowding and conflict by competing for desirable sites. One usual effect is that the trampled extent of the vista viewing area expands radially out… Continue reading Example Summit Sunrise Vista Site Atop Cadillac Mountain, Acadia National Park

Acadia National Park 3D Interactive Onsite Google Earth Map Cache River Valley Wetlands, Illinois, 3D Interactive Onsite Google Earth Map Denali National Park, Alaska, 3D Interactive Onsite Google Earth Map Evergreen Community Model, Illinois, 3D Interactive Onsite Google Earth Map Great Sand Dunes National Park & Preserve, Colorado, 3D Interactive Onsite Google Earth Map Haleakala… Continue reading Index of 3D Interactive Onsite Google Earth Maps for This Course

Wildlife quickly learn that refined, carb- & fat-rich human foods can replace days of dangerous exertion hunting or foraging for food. Then they also try swallowing things like fishing line, plastic bags, disposable lighters, and mylar food wrappers. Then they die or have to be euthanized. Site: Basalt shoreline south of Thunder Hole, Ocean Drive… Continue reading Example: Food-Attracted Seagull Gives Dr. Park the Side-Eyes at Acadia National Park

Federal resume template is going live. Go on a field trip near you! …Provided you feel safe doing so. Record some videos if you do of the things you find. Join us for Zoom debriefs each day. Or don’t and watch the recorded sessions if you need to. Practice your knots, so far including overhand,… Continue reading Wednesday, May 20 Rec Camp Roundup

Blue Hill Overlook is managed as developed frontcountry sacrifice zone: demand is so high to view sunsets here–for 2+ million visitors annually–that heavy use and the associated vegetation & soil impacts are concentrated here to protect other, similarly fragile areas nearby. The use is concentrated onto naturally impact-resistant pink granite bedrock. Ascending Cadillac Mountain Road… Continue reading Example Vista: Sunset at Blue Hill Overlook at Acadia National Park

Site: Visitor-Created Trail, Bass Harbor Head, Mount Desert Island Unit, Acadia National Park, Maine, USNPS 44° 13′ 25.68″ N 68° 19′ 55.56″ W Video: Logan Park 2018 3D Interactive Google Earth Onsite

Park staff close the wildly popular via ferrata (off-harness/nontechincal climbing route) Precipice Trail seasonally to protect the peregrine falcon nesting sites using the same cliffline. They also work hard to contact visitors here, armed with spotting scopes, to explain why the trail is closed. Visitors behave much more prosaically once they understand what’s at stake.… Continue reading Interpreting Peregrine Falcon Cliff-Nesting Sites at Acadia National Park

Much of Denali National Park is federally-designated wilderness. Traditional land uses, like Alaskan sled dog travel, are A-OK in wilderness. These dogs, though…let me tell you they’re bred to live like the hottest of hot-blooded racehorses. Intelligent, highly trainable, and completely pants-on-head over the top insanely energetic. I remember these barking as though possessed for… Continue reading Alaskan Sled Dogs (Working Animals) demo at Denali National Park

One core idea of wilderness is that humans need untamed places to challenge themselves, relax, connect with things greater than themselves. Do you agree? Site: Above Savage River Check Station, Core Wilderness Unit, Denali National Park, Alaska, USNPS 63.7501959 N 149.3146898 W 3D Interactive Google Earth Onsite

Forest Wildlife Habitat Managers, this is what your visitors will do when encountering any type of charismatic megafauna. These behaviors can cause tremendous problems if not managed. Done right, though, this is a safe, healthy, and exciting experience for your visitors and protective of the wildlife as well. In this location at Denali NP, visitors… Continue reading Moose Jam at Denali National Park

This is the post-glaciated equivalent of a river’s alluvial fan (cone-shaped deposit of coarse fragments / “alluvia”). Forest hydrologists, this is what a river’s alluvial fan looks like when it’s generated from a glacier’s outwash just upstream. Video: Logan Park 2007 3D Interactive Google Earth Onsite

Since the 1990s, national park systems around the world have begun to incorporate natural quiet and soundscapes as a precious and fragile natural resource. Noise pollution has powerful deleterious effects on human health and well-being, as well as for wildlife! Bass Harbor Head, Mount Desert Island Unit, Acadia National Park, Maine, USNPS 44° 13′ 30″… Continue reading Exercise: Listen for the unique soundscape / natural quiet of a cobble beach

Site: Bass Harbor Head, Mount Desert Island Unit, Acadia National Park, Maine, 44° 13′ 20.64″ N 68° 20′ 2.04″ W 3D  Interactive Google Earth Onsite

Wild edibles, such as fiddlehead ferns, blueberries, blackberries/raspberries, etc. can tempt people to go crashing through woody vegetative undergrowth in search of sweet morsels. A thirty-second diversion into a berry patch can destroy years of growth for sensitive species. Site: Bass Harbor Head, Mount Desert Island Unit, Acadia National Park, Maine USNPS 44° 13′ 19.92″… Continue reading Untitled

Site: Bass Harbor Head, Mount Desert Island Unit, Acadia National Park, Maine, USNPS, 44° 13′ 19.56″ N 68° 20′ 5.28″ W Interactive Google Earth Onsite Bogs form in places like this when the water has no great outflow point. Video: Logan Park

When visitors take park resources into their own hands, it can become a problem. Site: Bass Harbor Head, Mount Desert Island Unit, Acadia National Park, Maine, USNPS 44° 13′ 19.92″ N 68° 20′ 6.36″ W, Interactive Google Earth Onsite Video: Logan Park 2018

This is an example of a “Condition Class 5” (active erosional processes underway) trail segment in saturated subalpine acidic soil over granite (insoluble, low pH buffering) parent material. These roots shouldn’t be visible and degloved (bark stripped off by lugged boot sole trampling) under natural/non-trampled conditions. Site: Forested shoreline east of Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse,… Continue reading Example: Visitor-Created Trail Soil Subsidence (Erosion + Compaction) at Acadia National Park

Site: Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse, Mount Desert Island, Acadia National Park, Maine, USNPS 44° 13′ 18.84″ N, 68° 20′ 11.4″ W Onsite Interactive Google Earth Video: Logan Park 2018

Observe the basalt/granite stone steps sourced from local material. Also observe the custom-built boardwalk (raised wooden) stairs. Both are used all across the national park by Acadia National Park’s management team to physically separate 2+ million annual visitors’ feet from the fragile subalpine, shoreside lenses of thin, acidic spruce & fir needle-based soils. Onsite Interactive… Continue reading Example: What hardening a resource against rec impact looks like at Acadia National Park

Here, a coyote bounds down a mountainside to approach us and beg for food. What could possibly go wrong? In the video you’ll hear speculation about this being “habituation” but talking with the backpackers afterward, we learned the coyote had followed them seeking food handouts.

The tundra brush in Denali National Park can grow quite thickly, slowing wildlife travel, costing more precious calories, and concealing hungry predators. Some species adapt by using cleared human transportation infrastructure like the Denali Park Road to move much more quickly. Joe van Horn, Denali’s Chief of Resource Management at the time (2007) is driving… Continue reading Caribou Causing Congestion

Here you can see the basic approach to the site where we practice live/staffed interpretive guided hikes, a common technique used in professional environmental interpretation by rangers and affiliated naturalists.

Important Reminder: Keep an eye on D2L for the link to this afternoon’s debriefing with Dr. Akamani (Zoom) at 4pm Central USA time. For a detailed understanding of Lesson 5: Natural resource conflicts and wicked problems, please read Rittel and Webber (1973), Nie (2003), and Brooks & Champ (2006). All readings are available in the… Continue reading Natural Resource Conflicts Section, Human Dimensions, Day 5:

Complete: Lesson 3 Reading Assignment (from yesterday evening in the course calendar): Behnken et al 2016 Constraints to collaborative ecosystem management (D2L .pdf file) Cortner and Moote 1999 chapter 2 (D2L .pdf file) Cortner and Moote 1999 chapter 3 (D2L .pdf file) Comprehend: Lesson 3 Evolving approaches to natural resource management (D2L PowerPoint .pptx file)… Continue reading Natural Resource Planning Section Human Dimensions Day 3: Natural Resources Planning and the Cache River Valley

Interactive Google Earth Onsite This is what it looks like when a wildlife species decides to leave an area upon human arrival. Repeated throughout the day, these little encounters effectively degrade the habitat for the disturbed species. Each species has its own “flight radius” within which it will try to flee from human approach.

Historic clearcutting practices by some of the early western settlers and farmers to the area caused massive, massive soil erosion into rivers like the Current and Jacks Fork of Ozark National Scenic Riverways. These river channels were once described as deep, fast-flowing, and routinely scoured by flooding. Now, they are choked with gravel, cobble and… Continue reading Clearcutting Chokes Current

3D Interactable Google Earth Onsite

Cave spring is what a wet seep looks like when it grows to the size of a small river. This karst (calcareous / limestone-type wet cave could serve as solid habitat for a variety of aquatic & cave species, but its easy access and high desirability among human visitors puts a lot of pressure on… Continue reading Cave Spring Aperture

Site: Devil’s Well at Ozark National Scenic Riverways, Missouri Safe and durable facilities have to be built custom and usually onsite in order to provide access to–but protect from visitor impacts–sites like the karst sinkhole / cave / underground lake at Dvil’s Well, Ozark National Scenic Riverways.

Medano Creek is a sinking stream, but of a different kind than we’re used to in the karst (eroded, effectively porous/fractured limestone-type) geology we’re used to in the southern Midwest. Here in southern central Colorado, the sandy, wind-deposited soil forces the stream aboveground here and there and lets it disappear to flow slowly through the… Continue reading Antidunes migrating upstream

When the wildlife cease what they’re doing to monitor your visitors’ approach, it can add up to lost foraging time or distraction from predation. Near Alley Spring, Upper Current River, Ozark National Scenic Riverways, Missouri.

State agencies are pretty good at long-term, stabilized land management. Not-for-Profits can move more quickly and more easily participate in land swaps, easements, and other transactions. Put them together and you might have a more effective approach overall.

Read this: Watch this short intro to Ozark National Scenic Riverways (1m): https://www.facebook.com/Ozarkriverways/videos/319674212301433/ Watch this condensed 45-mile Current River float trip (10m): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBenak-PbnQ Explore the route shown in the video above using Google Earth for high-resolution 3D onsite tour. Get to know Big Spring using these onsite summer camp and class field trip videos:

Summer Camp 2020 Curriculum List (Google Doc): This is a working/living document that will list updates as we add them throughout the course.

Calculate stream discharge using the two worksheets in the file.  One worksheet is for the floating object method and one dataset is for the midpoint method using the Marsh-McBirney Flowmeter.  Optional extra explanation: How USGS applies the concept Dr. Williard is explaining. Optional USGS realtime data (example) used by forest hydrologists 

Interactive Google Earth Onsite (works best in Chrome browser)

To be clear, I’m not laughing at drowning in this video, I’m laughing at my demonstrated inability to tread water, speak, and record simultaneously. Interactive Google Earth Onsite

If you were in charge, how would you strike the balance between getting up close and personal with the ocean cliffs vs. keeping visitors more safely away but less able to see them?

Exercise: Why do you suppose park rangers would not communicate the location/access for some outstanding recreation sites?

So, how would you address this problem in a beloved wilderness area with a past land use history of NNIS? Remember, some options are off-limits in designated wilderness areas unless they are the minimum tool necessary.

Exercise: Determine how you’d manage visitor impacts to a site that’s culturally/spiritually important to native Hawaiians in the crater wilderness. For those of you that grew up in a typical western Christian tradition, this would be like somebody setting up their backpacking tent in your church or family graveyard, and playing around there. Interactive Onsite… Continue reading Cultural Cairns on Cinder Cones at Haleakalā National Park’s Crater Wilderness

Now that you have the briefest of introductions to the site, explore it in high resolution using Google Earth, for our class exercise: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ZV5dgw069v-S5urkXK0UZKucP0EE0imm&usp=sharing So, how would you address the visitor motivation to explore, the resource impacts to soil, vegetation, and wildlife, and visitor safety/risk?

Video: Logan Park

Video: Logan Park, 2007

Note the outhouse (“privy”, “composting toilet” in some cases) and its proximity to open water.

When visitors feed wildlife, they change the wildlife species’s responses to subsequent visitors. This is sometimes called “panhandling for food.” Cumberland Island National Seashore, federally-designated wilderness, March 2007. Recorded by: Logan Park