Amanda Hardy GDPE PhD Dissertation Seminar
Friday, April 13, 2012, 03:00 PM
Wagar Building, Room 133

A transportation corridor runs through it: people, wildlife, and transportation in national parks and beyond Transportation systems are the arteries of society; our quality of life depends on the mobility of goods, services, and connectivity to other communities. Transportation infrastructure also shapes and drives our interactions with landscapes, habitat, and wildlife. In national parks, these interactions affect visitor experiences and how managers address the dual mandate of conserving natural and cultural resources while offering access to these resources “for the benefit and enjoyment of the people”. Within and beyond park borders, mitigating unavoidable impacts of transportation may offer opportunities to achieve strategic conservation goals. In this seminar, I elaborate on how transportation affects people, wildlife, and management goals at small and large scales. Specifically, I will present a behavior ecology case study about how multi-use pathways in a national park affect elk, pronghorn, and opportunities for park visitors to see these animals. I will then discuss pioneering efforts to adapt how offset the unavoidable impacts of transportation across regional landscapes, with the goal of improving the efficiency of transportation project delivery and the effectiveness of ecological mitigation. Ultimately, the resiliency of coupled human and natural systems relies on our ability to recognize the costs and benefits of mobility and to understand how transportation systems affect our connections to ecological systems.

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Event Contact: Jeri Morgan can be reached at (970) 491-4373

Sponsored by the Graduate Degree Program in Ecology.