Managing outdoor recreation requires that managers do the following: (1) consider the user experience, environmental and cultural resources, and type and intensity of management actions; (2) specify desired conditions to be maintained, monitor conditions, and take appropriate action if unacceptable impacts occur; (3) adapt to new conditions and information; and (4) exercise good judgment based on their professional experience and the best information available to them. Social science studies of visitors and studies of significant recreation resources like campsites are important sources of information for managers and are commonly used in parks and protected areas to support planning and decision-making. The studies presented here are designed to enhance our understanding of how visitors evaluate the acceptability of impacts to recreation resources and how we can more effectively analyze large campsite resource condition datasets to get meaningful results. A better understanding of impacts to cultural and environmental resources, the people who visit parks, and how they evaluate the acceptability of impacts will enable managers to make more informed decisions. This is an important part of the adaptive management of parks and protected areas.

Private landowners refrain to open their land for recreational users in the fear of potential liability. This study covered the extent of liability, actual bodily injuries and property damages sustained by hunters and anglers in Mississippi. In order to aid for comparison, the study was divided in two sections. First it examined the risk and liability in fee access recreation through the review of court cases from 1904 to 2005. Second study explored the extent of actual bodily injuries and property damages sustained by hunters and anglers in Mississippi during 2002/03 to 2004/05 using telephone survey. It was found that landowners won 68% of the legal cases even though they charged fees for recreational access. The study revealed that 1% respondents of the total sample had accidents and only 16.8% respondents had the liability insurance coverage.

This study of the wilderness visitors to the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, Georgia sought to better define the dimensions of the lived wilderness experience, and the modes in which it is experienced; to understand the dynamics of the wilderness experience and how the wilderness experience changes across time; and to examine the relationship between the wilderness experience and ideal leisure. Because of people's apparent difficulty in accurately reporting experiences after the visit, the Experience Sampling Method was the primary data collection procedure. Six aspects of the wilderness experience were identified, inspired by the writings of Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, AIdo Leopold, Sigurd Olson, and other wilderness writers: oneness, primitiveness, humility, timelessness, solitude, and care. Five modes of experiencing the wilderness were developed based on the work of environmental psychology and leisure scholars: focus on self (introspection), focus on others (socialness), focus on task (task orientation), focus on emotions (emotional intensity), and focus on environment (environmental sensitivity). Confirmatory factor analysis, principal component analysis and reliability analyses were carried out to assess the stability and meaningfulness of the scales used to operationalize these dimensions. Sixty-two visitors were asked to carry and respond to the study questionnaire during multiple moments of their visit to the Okefenokee Wilderness. Oneness, humility, timelessness, and care appeared to be pertinent dimensions of the wilderness experience, as were the more traditionally measured values of solitude and primitiveness. Using a repeated measures analysis of variance, time was a significant factor in determining item response, thus demonstrating the dynamic nature of the wilderness experience. Ideal or peak leisure, operationalized by a combination of three measures of leisure (intrinsic motivation, perceived freedom, and connotative leisure) and high levels of intensity, was found to be correlated with raised feelings of oneness, humility, primitiveness, and solitude. The Experience Sampling Method identified important multiple dimensions of the wilderness experience, and demonstrated the dynamic nature of the experience more vividly than past post-hoc measures. However, the study also identified potential problems of ESM as a data collection instrument in wilderness : concerns of obtrusiveness on the visitor’s experience, behavioral reactance, and respondent compliance. / Ph. D.

published_or_final_version / Architecture / Master / Master of Landscape Architecture

An important requirement of a rational policy for provision of outdoor recreation opportunities is some understanding of natural processes and public concern and /or preferences. Computerized land use suitability mapping is a technique which can help find the best location for a variety of developmental actions given a set of goals and other criteria. Over the past two decades, the methods and techniques of land use planning have been engaged in a revolution on at least two fronts as to shift the basic theories and attitudes of which land use decisions are based. The first of these fronts is the inclusion of environmental concerns, and the second is the application of more systematic methods or models. While these automated capabilities have shed new light on environmental issues, they, unfortunately, have failed to develop sufficient intelligence and adaptation to accurately model the dynamics of ecosystems.The work reported proceeds on the belief that neural network models can be used to assess and develop resource management strategies for Mounds State Park, Anderson, Indiana. The study combines a photographic survey technique with a geographic information system (GIS) and artificial neural networks (NN) to investigate the perceived impact of park management activities on recreation opportunities and experiences. It is unique in that it incorporates both survey data with spatial data and an optimizing technique to develop a model for predicting perceived management values for short and long term recreation management.According to Jeannette Stanley and Evan Bak (1988) a neural network is a massively parallel, dynamic systems of highly interconnected interacting parts based on neurobiological models. The behavior of the network depends heavily on the connection details. The state of the network evolves continually with time. Networks are considered clever and intuitive because they learn by example rather than following simple programming rules. They are defined by a set of rules or patterns based on expertise or perception for better decision making. With experience networks become sensitive to subtle relationships in the environment which are not obvious to humans.The model was developed as a counter-propagation network with a four layer learning network consisting of an input layer, a normalized layer, a kohonen layer, and an output layer. The counter-propagation network is a feed-forward network which combines Kohonen and Widrow-Hoff learning rules for a new type of mapping neural network. The network was trained with patterns derived by mapping five variables (slope, aspect, vegetation, soil, site features) and survey responses from three groups. The responses included, for each viewshed, the preference and management values, and three recreational activities each group associated with a given landscape. Overall the model behaves properly in learning the different rules and generalizing in cases where inputs had not been shown to the network apriori. Maps are provided to illustrate the different responses obtained from each group and simulated by the model. The study is not conclusive as to the capabilities of the combination of GIS techniques and neural networks, but it gives a good flavor of what can be achieved when accurate mapping information is used by an intelligent system for decision making. / Department of Landscape Architecture

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Montana, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 85-88). Also available online (PDF file) by a subscription to the set or by purchasing the individual file.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Montana, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 85-88).

No description available.

Cheung Ka-Kui. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 111-117). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Abstract --- p.ii / Acknowledgements --- p.iv / Table of Contents --- p.v / List of Figures --- p.viii / List of Tables --- p.x / Chapter Chapter 1. --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Background --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2 --- Objectives --- p.3 / Chapter 1.3 --- Significance --- p.4 / Chapter 1.4 --- Organization of the Thesis --- p.5 / Chapter Chapter 2. --- Literature Review --- p.7 / Chapter 2.1 --- Hong Kong Country Parks and Management Practices --- p.7 / Chapter 2.1.1 --- Establishment of Country Parks --- p.7 / Chapter 2.1.2 --- Country Park Management Practices --- p.8 / Chapter 2.1.3 --- Country Park Design --- p.9 / Chapter 2.2 --- Negative Impacts created from Visitors --- p.10 / Chapter 2.2.1 --- General Background --- p.10 / Chapter 2.2.2 --- Specific Impacts --- p.12 / Chapter 2.2.2.1 --- Noise --- p.12 / Chapter 2.2.2.2 --- Trampling --- p.13 / Chapter 2.2.2.3 --- Littering --- p.15 / Chapter 2.3 --- Wildlife Resources in Hong Kong Country Parks --- p.16 / Chapter 2.3.1 --- Wildlife Resources in Hong Kong --- p.17 / Chapter 2.3.2 --- Conservation Efforts in Hong Kong --- p.19 / Chapter 2.4 --- Technological Advancements in Park Management --- p.19 / Chapter 2.4.1 --- Remote Sensing and Vegetation Mapping --- p.20 / Chapter 2.4.2 --- GIS and Park Management --- p.22 / Chapter Chapter 3. --- Study Area and Methodology --- p.25 / Chapter 3.1 --- Introduction --- p.25 / Chapter 3.2 --- Study Site --- p.25 / Chapter 3.2.1 --- Park Settings --- p.25 / Chapter 3.2.2 --- Ecological Resources --- p.28 / Chapter 3.3 --- Field Measurement --- p.32 / Chapter 3.3.1 --- Sampling Strategy --- p.32 / Chapter 3.3.2 --- Impact Indicators --- p.34 / Chapter 3.3.2.1 --- Noise --- p.34 / Chapter 3.3.2.2 --- Trampling --- p.35 / Chapter 3.3.2.3 --- Litter Dispersal --- p.36 / Chapter 3.4 --- Laboratory Techniques --- p.36 / Chapter 3.4.1 --- Remote Sensing Application --- p.36 / Chapter 3.4.1.1 --- Image Pre-processing --- p.36 / Chapter 3.4.1.2 --- Vegetation Index --- p.38 / Chapter 3.4.1.3 --- Vegetation Class Map --- p.39 / Chapter 3.4.2 --- The Ecological Dataset --- p.40 / Chapter 3.4.3 --- GIS Application --- p.40 / Chapter 3.4.3.1 --- Basic Operations --- p.40 / Chapter 3.4.3.2 --- Composite Maps for Recreation Impacts and Conservation Importance --- p.41 / Chapter Chapter 4. --- Spatial Characteristics of Visitor Impact and Natural Resources --- p.44 / Chapter 4.1 --- General Situation of Visitor Impacts --- p.44 / Chapter 4.1.1 --- Patterns from Vector Data Format --- p.44 / Chapter 4.1.2 --- Patterns from Raster Data Transformation --- p.52 / Chapter 4.1.3 --- Composite Impact Level --- p.56 / Chapter 4.2 --- Ecological Attributes of Shing Mun Country Park --- p.59 / Chapter 4.2.1 --- Vegetation Cover --- p.59 / Chapter 4.2.2 --- Water Resources --- p.62 / Chapter 4.2.3 --- General Distribution of Wildlife --- p.62 / Chapter 4.2.4 --- Conservation Significance on the Number of Species found --- p.69 / Chapter 4.2.5 --- Conservation Significance on the Number of Class found --- p.69 / Chapter 4.2.6 --- Conservation Significance on the Number of Trophic Level with Ecosystem --- p.70 / Chapter 4.2.7 --- Composite Conservation Significance --- p.70 / Chapter Chapter 5. --- Discussion --- p.78 / Chapter 5.1 --- Potential Association between Recreation and Conservation --- p.78 / Chapter 5.2 --- Park Design --- p.86 / Chapter 5.2.1 --- Zoning and Site Location --- p.86 / Chapter 5.2.2 --- Road and Footpath Network --- p.88 / Chapter 5.3 --- Problems in Country Park Management --- p.96 / Chapter 5.3.1 --- Recreation Management --- p.96 / Chapter 5.3.2 --- Wildlife Conservation --- p.97 / Chapter 5.4 --- Implications from the Study --- p.98 / Chapter 5.4.1 --- Mode of Recreation --- p.98 / Chapter 5.4.2 --- Importance of Baseline Studies --- p.99 / Chapter 5.5 --- Recommendations for Country Park Management --- p.101 / Chapter Chapter 6. --- Conclusion --- p.104 / Chapter 6.1 --- Summary of Findings --- p.104 / Chapter 6.2 --- Limitations of the Study --- p.105 / Chapter 6.3 --- Recommendations for Further Studies --- p.107 / Reference --- p.111 / Appendices --- p.118 / Chapter 1. --- Descriptions and Basic Sensor Characteristics of IKONOS Satellite Image --- p.118 / Chapter 2. --- Mathematic Conversion in Radiometric Correction --- p.120 / Chapter 3. --- Details on Aerial Photo Interpretation --- p.121 / Chapter 4. --- Recreation Site Recording Sheet --- p.122 / Chapter 5. --- Trespassing Recording Sheet --- p.123

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1956 S94 / Master of Science