Cyberinfrastructure in Parks and Protected Area Management: The Open Parks Grid

Elizabeth Dennis Baldwin1, Brett Wright1, Sebastien Goasguen2, Rob Baldwin3, Chris Post3, Pat Layton3, Fran Mainella1

1Department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism, Clemson University; 2 School of Computing, Clemson University, 3 Department Of Forestry and Natural Resources, Clemson University

Photo: R. Baldwin

INTRODUCTIONParks and protected areas are important for the overall health and quality of life for people and the environment, in-situ conservation of biological diversity, protection of ecosystem services, protection of threatened cultural and historic sites, centers for education, opportunities for recreation, economic engines, and as places for enhancing community cohesion and building social capital. Because of the diversity of goals parks and protected areas serve, the professions linked to these areas and the field in general, are vast.

The Open Parks Grid will serve as the communication backbone of the George B. Jr. and Helen C. Hartzog Institute for Parks, and a virtual gateway to parks around the world.

Park Management: Local, Regional and National

Behavioral Science

Recreation and Tourism

Conservation and Park Advocacy

Park Policy and Administration

Biological and Ecological Science

History, Art and the Humanities

Education, Interpretation and Outreach

PROBLEMS FACING PARKS AND PROTECTED AREAS•Parks are highly dispersed geographically and found in some of the world’s most remote location•Parks tend to function as isolated management units organized hierarchically rather than horizontally•Parks are integral to a healthy environment and society and yet their resources are being degraded •Established channels of communication among park managers and researchers do not maximize the opportunities for collaboration and solving management problems•Research funding for parks is limited and needs to be maximized across the dispersed network•In a digital society, public interest in parks and their unique resources will be best maintained through a digital link

PURPOSE1. Unite the highly distributed parks community

2. Gather and disseminate the best available science 3. Assemble key data on climate change, species loss, ecosystems change,

and other macro-level concerns that can be accessed by scientists world-wide;

4. Monitor and project visitation data at multiple scales to analyze visitation patterns spatially and temporally. Regional visitation models do not exist.

5. Virtually open the door to our parks to a vast number of citizens who do not have the opportunity to visit, thus increasing awareness and the educational value of the world’s most treasured resources.

CYBERINFRASTRUCTURE FOR THE PARKSFrom a cyberinfrastructure perspective the solution envisioned is the design and deployment of social networking tools that allow the creation of network community. From a cyberinfrastructure research perspective, the disparity of data and interests across the OPG represent a terrific challenge of data fusion and data mining, and ensuring access for researchers, practitioners and the public. Unlike the Open Science Grid, the OPG consortium members represent far more constituencies than academia and private research; with this diversity of users comes challenging complexity that will advance grid computing generally.

THE OPPORTUNITYParks and protected areas bring together a diverse group of professionals. They are vehicles for innovative partnerships; yet connecting with each other across multiple professions, disciplines, jurisdictions, and scales is a difficult if not impossible task currently. There are many groups with a focus on parks and protected areas, but each has their own focus and discipline they draw from, i.e. their niche. Currently there is no one group that “connects all the dots,” or one that attempts to network the whole of the park community of researchers, managers, policy makers, educators, advocates and users.

The overarching goal of the Open Parks Grid is to integrate parks and people who use, manage and study them through a far-reaching computing network called the Open Parks Grid.

USE SCENARIOS•A park manager is responsible for a population of an endangered species. The park is under funded for management, let alone research. The manager knows she needs to assess the viability of the species population under various management scenarios, but has not the time nor the expertise to perform needed population viability analyses (PVA's). She can log onto the OPG and place a research request, listing possible funding sources. Professors at universities and colleges that are members of the OPG can search for research projects, and the appropriate research team will be linked with this park manager in a matter of days.

•A new park manager (superintendent, director) is hired, and needs information on park resources, park threats, partnerships, and access to all reports. This person could go to the OPG for all of this information and more. Currently this information can be very difficult to gather.

•A fifth grade school teacher is covering a unit on geology, and after going to Yellowstone himself, decides he wants the students to see this. He logs on to the OPG and finds a hike with a ranger to some geysers and fumaroles.