By Kacee Saturay, Digital Marketing & Donor Stewardship Manager
684,000 acres make up the North Cascades National Park Service Complex. About 94% is designated wilderness, which is rarely seen by most park visitors. In a recent virtual field trip, we explored a project that Washington’s National Park Fund (WNPF) supported in the North Cascades – specifically the Stephen Mather Wilderness – and the mapping tool created to observe and monitor the wilderness character of the park.
Made possible by WNPF donors and collaboration between the North Cascades National Park Service Complex and Andrew Giacomelli – a Western Washington University graduate student – a GIS toolbox was developed to create and assess spatial baselines of wilderness character in the park and other wilderness areas under the National Wilderness Preservation System (NWPS).
The Wilderness Act of 1964 established the NWPS, composed of federally designated wilderness areas to provide for protection and preservation of their wilderness character. The NWPS is managed by four agencies: Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, U.S. Forest Service, and the National Park Service.
Mapping wilderness characteristics has the potential benefit to provide these land managers with a baseline for future monitoring, highlight potential areas for wilderness designation, spotlight threats to the wilderness, analyze effects of planning alternatives, and model future impacts.
During this project, a mapping tool and a series of maps were generated depicting the positive and negative effects on the five qualities of wilderness character defined under the NWPS, which include the degree to which a wilderness is 1) untrammeled, 2) natural, 3) undeveloped, 4) provides outstanding opportunities for solitude or primitive and unconfined recreation, and 5) other features of value unique to each wilderness area.
Similar wilderness character mapping have occurred in national parks like Death Valley, Olympic, Denali, Sequoia & Kings Canyon, Gates of the Arctic, and Black Canyon of the Gunnison. Andrew gave a preview of the maps in those parks, which gave land managers a better understanding of the effects of planning alternatives.
He also highlighted an example in 2013, where Death Valley took part in a mapping exercise that compared the effects of improving primitive roads into wilderness areas of that park. The maps showcased reduced access times and decreased opportunities for solitude if these primitive roads were accessed by motorized vehicles and equipment. This served as a planning tool for land managers to better understand the degradation of the park’s wilderness.
In the virtual field trip, Andrew also walked us through the different map overlays of the North Cascades, how he gathered and organized data, and how the tool is utilized by a GIS specialist.
We highly recommend watching the presentation to get a better understanding of the general flow of creating a degradation map. But simply put, Andrew’s method of creating the degradation maps are as follows: identify measures, collect & create data, assign values to data, process GIS data, and generate maps.
One map that we want to highlight is the “Overall Total Wilderness Character Degradation.” This map is the result of overlaying all the five wilderness qualities in the park. The map shows that the northern part of the wilderness is well preserved. Wilderness degradation in the North Cascades is generally tied to high-use recreation and development. Andrew notes that the lighter colors are “the mélange of trail infrastructure, visitation, and maintenance activities that bring about the need for management restriction on visitor behavior.”
Previously, the mapping process was time-consuming, summing up to almost 200 geoprocessing tasks! Andrew’s toolbox (evolved from technical guidelines established by James Tricker and Peter Landres) took 2-3 years of development. It’s not as simple as using an app on a phone, but instead run by GIS technician along with standard operating procedures (SOPs) that he created. Andrew was able to simplify the mapping process down to seven tools within the toolbox. We recommend watching the presentation at this time stamp to see the toolbox in action.
The deliverables for this project in the North Cascades included the toolbox, a geodatabase with data measures, a folder with map layouts, and a folder with SOPs and spreadsheet for assigning data measures.
Andrew notes that wilderness mapping can be taken with a grain of salt since these maps represent something three-dimensional on a two-dimensional surface. It would obviously be difficult to get absolutely accurate data on every inch of the park’s rugged 684,000 acres of land at every single moment in time.
Rather, this mapping tool serves as a valuable resource for park managers, enabling them to make informed decisions for preserving the wilderness while also managing the visitor experiences and opportunities that the park provides. By identifying specific areas of concern, targeted conservation efforts can be implemented to mitigate human impact and maintain the integrity of the wilderness.
For a more in-depth understanding, we highly recommend watching this immersive and informative virtual field trip!
Washington’s National Park Fund is the official philanthropic partner of Mount Rainier, North Cascades, and Olympic National Parks. Donations fund scientific research, youth and family experiences, and projects that will keep these parks strong and vital now and forever, for everyone. Your gifts make a difference; consider supporting these invaluable programs today.
All photos courtesy of Andrew Giacomelli