OBJECTIVE To analyze backcountry-area water quality in US Department of Agriculture Forest Service-designated wilderness areas for the presence of coliform and potentially pathogenic bacteria. METHODS Thirty-one backcountry lakes and streams were selected that would stratify the risk based on use by backpackers, pack animals, commercial grazing animals, or natural unaffected wilderness areas....

Above: In many wilderness areas, recreational access must be limited so that visitors can experience solitude and pristine ecosystems. One challenge facing wilderness managers is finding the balance between access and preservation that maximizes those values. D av id N . C ol e monitoring conditions, implementing restricted permit systems or other visitor management techniques, educating visito...

This paper reviews the body of literature on recreation resource impacts and their management in the United States, with a primary focus on research within designated wildernesses during the past 15 years since the previous review (Cole 1987b). Recreation impacts have become a salient issue among wilderness scientists, managers and advocates alike. Studies of recreation impacts, referred to as ...

In the United States, legislation dictates that wilderness areas should be managed to, among other things, provide recreational visitors with opportunities for solitude. The growing popularity of outdoor recreation in backcountry settings presents managers with challenges in their efforts to achieve this objective. Recent research suggests that computer-based simulation modeling is an effective...

Early applications of wilderness economic research demonstrated that the values of natural amenities and commodities produced from natural areas could be measured in commensurate terms. To the surprise of many, the economic values of wilderness protection often exceeded the potential commercial values that might result from resource extraction. Here, the concepts and tools used in the economic ...

Since 1982, under an agreement between the California Department of Water Resources and the USDA Forest Service, snow sensors have been installed and operated in Forest Service-administered wilderness areas in the Sierra Nevada of California. The sensors are to be removed by 2005 because of the premise that sufficient data will have been collected to allow "correlation" and, by implication, pre...

Several of the most important conservation prioritization approaches select markedly different areas at global and regional scales. They are designed to maximize a certain biodiversity dimension such as coverage of species in the case of hotspots and complementarity, or composite properties of ecosystems in the case of wilderness. Most comparisons between approaches have ignored the multidimens...

Wilderness managers strive to provide quality recreation experiences. Because of this commitment, a need exists to further incorporate experiential aspects into current planning and management frameworks. This article suggests a focus on relationships with wilderness, moving beyond the examination of single transactions with a setting toward a consideration of the dynamic engagements visitors a...

Although marine reserves represent one of the most effective management responses to human impacts, their capacity to sustain the same diversity of species, functional roles and biomass of reef fishes as wilderness areas remains questionable, in particular in regions with deep and long-lasting human footprints. Here we show that fish functional diversity and biomass of top predators are signifi...