Browsing by Author "Holmes, Thomas"

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    Analysis of Commercial Use Management Policies in the National Park Service
    (2017-04-28) Murphy, Kristin
    Private companies, or commercial services, provide goods and services within national parks including lodging, food, transportation, and guided activities. One way for commercial services to operate within a national park is by applying for a commercial use authorization (CUA), which is a short-term permit that "authorizes an individual, group, company, or other for-profit entity to conduct commercial activities and provide specific visitor services within a national park unit." Due to the NPS Centennial celebration and record-breaking visitation, Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park have experienced an overwhelming increase in CUA applications over the last few years. This paper uses a literature review of NPS policies and semi-structured interviews conducted with NPS employees to analyze how CUA programs operate at 10 other parks. Findings from this study will provide guidance and recommendations to Arches and Canyonlands on long-term strategies to improve the management of their CUA program.
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    Recreation and Wilderness Trends at the White Mountain National Forest
    (2011-04-28) DuRocher, Lauren
    The White Mountain National Forest (WMNF) provides a unique and important recreational opportunity and experience for visitors from around New England and beyond. Monitoring is a necessary step to assess recreation use trends, resource impacts, and visitor experience. This monitoring can inform management to better adapt to use levels, anticipate future trends and mitigate resource concerns. Goals of the monitoring are outlined in the Forest Plan and Monitoring Guide. Visitor use and Wilderness data and information from across the WMNF was brought together to assess current monitoring efforts. Within several important recreation sectors historical data was used to analyze and model trend lines. The areas of analysis included developed campground use, backcountry hut and shelter use, alpine skiing, cross-country skiing and Wilderness group size and number of visitors. Overall the WMNF is keeping up with the recreation and wilderness monitoring goals set forth in the Monitoring Guide. The Forest as a whole has continued to provide a wide range of quality recreation opportunities from motorized to non-motorized to primitive. Efforts to monitor developed recreation sites including ski areas, and campgrounds as well as backcountry facilities such as huts and selected shelters have been consistent. In addition, the Forest has continued to complete Wilderness visitor use monitoring consistently over the past five years. Areas in the monitoring program that still need implementation include monitoring of rock climbing areas and shoulder season impacts of snowmobiling. Other monitoring areas that need some improvement include outfitter/guide use, use on Forest Trails, Wilderness campsite size and visitor perceived quality and crowding. These areas all have some monitoring efforts but will need to be improved in order to fulfill the objectives outlined in the Monitoring Guide.
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    Willingness-to-Pay for Water Quality Improvements in the Androscoggin River: Enhancing Geospatial Validity in Benefit Transfers
    (2015-04-24) Glidden-Lyon, Emma
    Geospatial variables have been omitted from most meta-regression models evaluating water quality improvements, undermining the validity of these studies’ estimations of willingness-to-pay (WTP). This paper takes a recent analysis demonstrating the importance of geospatial variables and applies it to water quality improvements in the Androscoggin River. The Androscoggin River has seen dramatic improvements in water quality since the 1970s but still struggles in certain reaches to meet the minimum state attainment standards. This paper estimates WTP for the historic improvements as well as WTP for additional future changes by applying a new meta-regression model created by Johnston et al. (in review). Johnston et al.'s paper increases the validity of WTP estimations by including three significant geospatial variables: scale of the affected resource; size of the market area; and availability of substitutes (in review). The empirical analysis here also finds that exclusion of the geospatial variables has a large impact on the WTP estimates, with overestimates when the geospatial scale of the market area to the region or affected water body to market area is relatively small and underestimates when these ratios of these variables are relatively large. The results also indicate that there is positive WTP per household for the historic water quality improvements in the Androscoggin River and for possible future water improvements.