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| This Wilderness Character Monitoring Technical Guide provides a tested and refined
| | [[File:Wilderness survival guide.jpg|frameless|right]] |
| methodology for monitoring trends in wilderness character based on lessons learned
| | ==== What is all this? ==== |
| from 15 years of experience developing and implementing wilderness character
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| monitoring across the National Wilderness Preservation System. This document
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| updates and replaces the Technical Guide for Monitoring Selected Conditions
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| Related to Wilderness Character (Landres et al. 2009), and provides protocols
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| for the Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, to implement a nationally
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| consistent approach to wilderness character monitoring across all 448 wildernesses
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| administered by the agency. This approach also is consistent with the interagency
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| wilderness character monitoring strategy published in Keeping It Wild 2: An Updated
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| Interagency Strategy to Monitor Trends in Wilderness Character Across the
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| National Wilderness Preservation System (Landres et al. 2015) and endorsed in 2015
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| by the Interagency Wilderness Policy Council.
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| This technical guide builds on the best available data to yield a coherent
| | These pages contain corrected and annotated versions of documentation mostly to do with wilderness and 'wilderness character' in the United States. So far we have: |
| understanding of how wilderness character is changing over time. Wilderness
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| character monitoring provides the Forest Service:
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| * Information to show how agency stewardship makes a difference on the ground based on credible data that are collected consistently and endure over time.
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| * Accountability for the legal and policy mandate “to preserve wilderness character” by compiling key data to evaluate trends in conditions that tie directly to the Wilderness Act of 1964.
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| * A communication framework to comprehensively discuss wilderness stewardship needs and priorities related to preserving wilderness character within the Forest Service and with the public.
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| Wilderness character monitoring in the Forest Service is designed to be nationally | | [[USFS Wilderness Character Monitoring Technical Guide]] |
| consistent while allowing and encouraging local flexibility as necessary to meet
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| wilderness-specific needs. The statutory language of the Wilderness Act is used
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| to identify five qualities of wilderness character that form the foundation of this
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| monitoring: (1) Untrammeled, (2) Natural, (3) Undeveloped, (4) Solitude or Primitive
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| and Unconfined Recreation, and (5) Other Features of Value. This technical guide uses
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| Keeping It Wild 2’s organizational framework of qualities, monitoring questions, and
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| indicators to ensure consistency across the four wilderness managing agencies (the
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| Forest Service, the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and the
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| U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service). Each agency identifies measures to evaluate trends
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| in these five qualities. This technical guide describes the Forest Service required as
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| well as optional measures. Locally developed measures to meet wilderness-specific
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| information needs are also discussed.
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| | Eventually we will have it all. Promises promises. |
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| This technical guide is composed of the following:
| | ==== Isn't this stuff already on a real government website somewhere? ==== |
|
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| * [[Abbreviations and Acronyms]]
| | Maybe. Government websites come and go, and in many cases documents, pages, database applications, and whole domains are removed from public availability and not replaced. Most of the time this happens when employees or priorities change, but in many cases non-technical content managers just can't keep up when an agency switches from ftp and CGI scripts to Adobe Dreamweaver, to Oracle ContentDB, to Microsoft Sharepoint, to 'let's just shoehorn EVERYTHING into an ArcGIS storymap'. Things break, especially websites after the idiot programmer has gone home. |
| * '''Part 1, National Framework''', describes what and why, i.e., the approach the Forest Service will use to implement wilderness character monitoring nationwide, including definitions and key concepts.
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| # [[Wilderness Character Monitoring in the Forest Service]]
| | Plus, government websites generally have bad design, irritating 'webmasters', boneheaded policies, and mid-century publishing routines. Meetings, trainings, delays. Eventually the CIO decides to discontinue PHP or the Ministry of Communication changes its mind about scientists having blogs, and pages disappear again. No, but thanks no. |
| # [[Untrammeled Quality]]
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| # [[Natural Quality]]
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| # [[Undeveloped Quality]]
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| # [[Solitude or Primitive and Unconfined Recreation Quality]]
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| # [[Other Features of Value Quality]]
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| * '''Part 2, Monitoring Protocols''', describes how this monitoring will be implemented with detailed, step-by-step protocols.
| | ==== This looks like Wikipedia, is this Wikipedia? ==== |
|
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| # [[Monitoring Protocols|Overview]]
| | No, but these pages use [https://www.mediawiki.org/ MediaWiki] software, which was developed to run Wikipedia. Wikipedia is different though, in that it has [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_content_guidelines rules] and a society of admins to enforce what goes on in their articles. In most cases, information on these pages would not fit Wikipedia's model of only having independently sourced articles about [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability notable] topics. |
| # [[Untrammeled Quality Indicators]]
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| # [[Natural Quality Indicators]]
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| # [[Undeveloped Quality Indicators]]
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| # [[Solitude or Primitive and Unconfined Recreation Quality Indicators]]
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| # [[Other Features of Value Quality Indicators]]
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| * [[Glossary]]
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| * [[References]]
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| * Appendices
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| # [[Summary of Key Implementation Attributes for All the Measures in Each Quality]]
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| # [[Measures Considered But Not Used]]
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| Implementing wilderness character monitoring does not guarantee the preservation of
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| wilderness character, but it informs and helps improve wilderness stewardship by ensuring
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| that Forest Service line officers and managers are accountable to the central mandate of the
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| Wilderness Act—to preserve wilderness character.
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What is all this?
These pages contain corrected and annotated versions of documentation mostly to do with wilderness and 'wilderness character' in the United States. So far we have:
USFS Wilderness Character Monitoring Technical Guide
Eventually we will have it all. Promises promises.
Isn't this stuff already on a real government website somewhere?
Maybe. Government websites come and go, and in many cases documents, pages, database applications, and whole domains are removed from public availability and not replaced. Most of the time this happens when employees or priorities change, but in many cases non-technical content managers just can't keep up when an agency switches from ftp and CGI scripts to Adobe Dreamweaver, to Oracle ContentDB, to Microsoft Sharepoint, to 'let's just shoehorn EVERYTHING into an ArcGIS storymap'. Things break, especially websites after the idiot programmer has gone home.
Plus, government websites generally have bad design, irritating 'webmasters', boneheaded policies, and mid-century publishing routines. Meetings, trainings, delays. Eventually the CIO decides to discontinue PHP or the Ministry of Communication changes its mind about scientists having blogs, and pages disappear again. No, but thanks no.
This looks like Wikipedia, is this Wikipedia?
No, but these pages use MediaWiki software, which was developed to run Wikipedia. Wikipedia is different though, in that it has rules and a society of admins to enforce what goes on in their articles. In most cases, information on these pages would not fit Wikipedia's model of only having independently sourced articles about notable topics.
