Browsing by Subject "National park"
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Item Bordering North America : constructing wilderness along the periphery of Canada, Mexico, and the United States(2013-05) Baumgardner, Neel Gregory; Bsumek, Erika Marie; Brands, H.W.; McKiernan-Gonzalez, John; Hoelscher, Steven; Johnson, BenjaminThis dissertation considers the exchanges between national parks along the North American borderlands that defined the contours of development and wilderness and created a brand new category of protected space -- the transboundary park. The National Park Systems of Canada, Mexico, and the United States did not develop and grow in isolation. "Bordering North America" examines four different parks in two regions: Waterton Lakes and Glacier in the northern Rocky Mountains of Alberta and Montana and Big Bend and the Maderas del Carmen in the Chihuahuan Desert of Texas and Coahuila. In 1932, Glacier and Waterton Lakes were combined to form the first transboundary park. In the 1930s and 1940s, using the Waterton-Glacier model as precedent, the U.S. and Mexican governments undertook a major effort, ultimately unsuccessful, to designate a sister park in Mexico and combine the two areas into another international space. Finally, in 1994, Mexico established two protected areas, including the Maderas del Carmen, adjacent to the Big Bend. Ideas about parks and wilderness migrated across borders just as freely as the flora and fauna these spaces sought to protect. Moreover, a multiplicity of views and forces, from three different Park Services, the visiting public, private enterprise, local landholders, competing government agencies and international NGOs, and even the elements of nature itself, all combined to shape the trajectory of park development.Item Exploring Spatial Variations in the Relationship between National Park Visitation and Associated Factors in Texas Counties(2013-11-07) Lee, Kyung HeeRecreation demand such as national park visitation is influenced by various social, demographic, and economic factors. These key variables are important indicators in predicting future trends and provide beneficial information about potential park visitors for managers and planners. As parks and protected areas become impacted by socio-economic changes, it is important to understand the relationship between specific factors of recreation participation and national park visitation. From a practitioner perspective, recreation agencies require multi-scale levels of information in order to address visitor and facility needs. While site-based research or using disaggregated models are helpful to satisfy specific purposes for a park, they often do not provide this information in spatially distributed data on a statewide or regional level. Recreation planners and managers need recreation demand forecasts at levels of spatial aggregations. This study tried to identify the spatial relationships between national park visitation and its associated factors using large aggregated data. Guided by the idea of opportunity theory and Pigram?s conceptual framework, this study empirically investigated what and how factors associated with national park visitation influence demand within the Texas boundary. Specifically, this study developed a spatial regression model of national park visitation demand in Texas using Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR). This model estimated the strength of the relationship between visitation and selected demographic, socioeconomic and situational factors. Methodologically, traditional regression models (e.g., OLS) yield only a single estimate in a relationship. In comparison, GWR allows an estimate of the spatial variation of the relationship within the study area. Several private and public data sources were used in the model to create reliably aggregated data. Several explanatory variables, e.g., poverty rate, family structures, recreation-related spending patterns and level of education, were hypothesized to influence the level of national park visitation for spatially varying relationships across the study area. From a methodological perspective, this study found interesting methodological implications (e.g., rethinking the traditional regression model for recreation demand estimation) and the potential associated with the use of spatial statistics to analyze the relationships between recreation participation and societal factors. This research demonstrated the importance of including spatial variables as part of recreation demand analysis. Relatively little work has used spatial models in the field of recreation. The results of this study demonstrate the usefulness of spatial analysis for detecting various relationships within the state over traditional statistical analysis.Item Identifying entrenchment issues in a protected areas dispute : a case study of the Białowieża Forest conflict in Poland(2011-12) Sekowski, Agnes Janina; Campbell, Craig A. R., 1973-; Wong, Patrick; Bychkova-Jordan, BellaThe Białowieża Forest (or Belovezhskaya Pushcha in Belarusian) is considered the last primeval forest in lowland Europe, straddling the border of Poland and Belarus in a 41/59 percent split. This project investigates the various issues involved in the most recent negotiations process that attempted to incorporate non-park areas of the Białowieża Forest in Poland into the Białowieża National Park. It seeks to understand the entrenchment of stakeholders on opposing sides of this protected areas dispute that has been underway since the area was first designated a Nature Reserve in 1921. An interview-based case study approach was used to explore prevalent themes and emerging narratives of the conflict, such as stakeholder relationships, competing conservation ideologies, economic factors, social tensions, administrative issues, and media portrayal.