Sustainable campsite management in protected areas: A study of long-term ecological changes on campsites in the boundary waters canoe area wilderness, Minnesota, USA

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Abstract

Managers of protected natural areas seek to protect their natural conditions while providing opportunities for recreational visitation. Camping is an essential element of backcountry and wilderness recreation for a variety of protected natural areas in the U.S. and internationally. Furthermore, overnight visitors to protected areas spend a substantial portion of their time on campsites so their behaviors determine the nature and extent of resource impacts, and the quality of their recreational experiences can be affected by campsite conditions. The U.S. Forest Service manages nearly 2000 designated campsites in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. This research assessed resource conditions on 81 wilderness campsites and paired undisturbed controls in 1982 and 2014 to quantify long-term ecological changes. A comprehensive array of physical, vegetative, and soil indicators were measured to identify long-term trends over 32 years of continuous campsite use.

Our findings reveal substantial changes in area of vegetation cover, exposed soil, and soil erosion on campsites. Although mean campsite size is unchanged, the proportion of campsite area in the “core” has decreased, shifting some use and impact into peripheral “satellite” tenting areas just beyond campsite borders. The ecology of campsites has been significantly altered by a large reduction in number and cover of campsite trees. The number of campsite trees decreased by 44% from 1982 to 2014. Visitors are cutting both on- and off-site trees for firewood, and tree seedlings are rarely able to germinate and survive due to visitor activity.

These findings reveal that older campsites are not stable. Long-term camping impacts that are ecologically, managerially, and experientially meaningful are occurring; these impacts could be minimized through more sustainable management practices. These include selecting more resistant sites, such as those with resistant rocky shorelines, and sloping terrain that constrains campsite expansion. Construction and maintenance of tenting sites can attract and spatially concentrate camping impact. Actions to halt tree cutting are also critical. Heavy long-term visitation in protected natural areas requires more sustainable and intensive visitor impact management actions.

Introduction

Most protected areas internationally are managed to preserve natural conditions, biodiversity, and natural processes, often excluding many forms of human development while accommodating recreation visitation (Leverington, Costa, Pavese, Lisle, & Hockings, 2010). For example, the U.S. National Wilderness Preservation System (P.L. 88–577) charges agencies to administer these protected areas: “for the use and enjoyment of the American people in such manner as will leave them unimpaired for future use and enjoyment as wilderness.” In light of increasing visitation, managers must discover and implement improved visitor use management practices that minimize resource degradation. For this to occur, protected natural area managers need to better understand what visitation-related ecological changes occur over time and what factors most strongly influence the extent of change. Such knowledge can then be applied to inform the selection of management actions able to sustain intensive visitation with minimal degradation.

Environmental degradation from visitor activities can contribute to a range of resource impacts that vary by type and severity. Even low levels of trampling disturbance can reduce vegetation height, cover, and biomass (Cole, 1995a, Cole, 1995b, Growcock and Pickering, 2011; Marion, Leung, Eagleston, & Burroughs, 2016). Higher levels of trampling lead to more complete vegetation loss and compositional change as plants are lost or replaced by more resistant species (Cole, 1995b, Marion and Cole, 1996, Smith and Newsome, 2002). Concentrated traffic also pulverizes soil leaf litter and humus layers, which are either lost through erosional processes or intermixed with underlying mineral soils. Exposed soils are more vulnerable to displacement, compaction, and erosion (Marion et al., 2016, Monti and Mackintosh, 1979). Compaction reduces soil pore space and water/air infiltration, increasing water runoff and erosion rates. Additional impacts specific to camping activities include campfire-related impacts such as tree damage, felling, and depletion of woody material (Hall and Farrell, 2001, Reid and Marion, 2005, Smith and Newsome, 2002).

This study examines long-term resource impacts on agency-designated campsites in a U.S. wilderness area. Two management strategies applied to minimize camping impacts include dispersal, where campers select a pristine site with durable substrates or vegetation, or containment – where campers concentrate their activity on a limited number of small, resistant, well-established or designated campsites (Hammitt, Cole, & Monz, 2014; Marion, 2016). Research and management experience have found the containment strategy to be most effective in moderate to high use areas (Leung and Marion, 1999, Marion, 2016, Reid and Marion, 2004). Due to increasing visitation, managers are funding studies like this one to investigate long-term impacts and improve guidance on campsite sustainability: which we define as the ability of campsites to accommodate intensive long-term use while remaining in good condition, with minimal maintenance or restoration. Research questions include: 1) How do campsite conditions change over several decades of continual use, 2) What use-related, environmental, and managerial factors most strongly influence long-term campsite conditions, and 3) What are the implications of these findings for improving the sustainability of campsite management?

In this study, we seek to answer these questions by analyzing data collected in 1982 and 2014 on a large sample of designated campsites in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) in northern Minnesota. Specifically, we replicate an array of biophysical measurements on 81 BWCAW campsites and paired control sites to document and analyze 32 years of ecological change (Marion, 1984, Marion and Merriam, 1985a, Marion and Merriam, 1985b).

The BWCAW has served as an important study area for some of the earliest recreation ecology research, particularly for longitudinal studies. A study examining the effect of differing use levels on impacts found that even light use (0–30 days use/season) resulted in substantial loss of ground cover (Frissell & Duncan, 1965). A 1969 study by McCool, Merriam and Cushwa found that campsites on islands and along main canoe routes showed more substantial impacts, which they attributed primarily to higher use levels. Merriam et al. (1973) also reported that campsites are most highly affected by initial site use. Once an area is selected as a campsite, trampling quickly results in loss of organic and vegetative ground cover, while subsequent traffic results in diminishing per capita impact (Merriam & Smith, 1974). However, some impacts do increase over time and with increasing use levels, notably exposed soil. Some of this early work was continued by Merriam & Peterson (1983), who examined changes on eight BWCAW campsites over 15 years, finding that higher use sites expanded in size over time and that visitors were continuing to cut trees for firewood (Merriam & Peterson, 1983).

Elsewhere, Cole and his co-investigators have reported results from several long-term studies employing rapid monitoring-level ratings (Cole, 2013, Cole and Parsons, 2013, Cole et al., 2008). Monitoring of Grand Canyon National Park backcountry campsites over 20 years found campsite sizes to be stable (Cole, Foti, & Brown, 2008). While high-use sites were more degraded than low-use sites, within each use level resource impacts were relatively consistent over time.

We note that none of these early BWCAW and later long-term monitoring studies included detailed ecological measurements of both campsite and paired “control” site conditions replicated over time. There are several important limitations to these studies. First, plant communities vary with respect to plant cover and other attributes. Analyses designed to examine sustainability are most valid when they compare “absolute difference” values, computed by subtracting campsite indicator values from values assessed on adjacent environmentally paired undisturbed “control” areas. Second, these early studies and nearly all monitoring programs do not count tree damage and felling indicators both onsite and offsite and report them as density (#/ha) measures. Longitudinal comparisons for these indicators become less valid over time as campsite sizes change, and as campsite trees are cut down the number of damaged and felled trees reported in subsequent monitoring cycles must inevitably decline, indicating improving conditions when the opposite is true. Third, monitoring studies generally employ rapidly assessed ratings rather than accurate measurements. Ratings are a coarse approximation of actual change, particularly when large percentages of sites fall within a single rating category, or when substantial degradation occurs to sites in the “worst” category, which is open-ended (e.g. campsite size > 300m2).

We found no other studies that avoided these limitations, which we’ve addressed in this research. In 2014 we returned to reassess ecological changes on BWCAW campsites and paired control sites first measured in 1982 (Marion, 1984, Marion and Merriam, 1985a, Marion and Merriam, 1985b). It provides a comprehensive dataset with longitudinal biophysical measurements and a larger sample size needed to improve understanding of long-term ecological changes and their implications for sustainable campsite management.

A number of factors identified in the 1982 study relate to campsite sustainability and are reviewed here. While vegetative ground cover declined from an average of 94% offsite to 36% onsite, the amount and durability of vegetation cover increased significantly with increasing campsite sunlight exposure (Marion & Merriam, 1985a). Shade-tolerant plants are particularly susceptible to trampling while sun-loving plants, primarily grasses and sedges (graminoids), are more trampling-resistant. For example, mean dense vegetation ground cover was only 4% on campsites with 75–100% tree cover, but increased to 52% on campsites with less than 25% tree cover (Marion & Merriam, 1985a). Over time, trampling alters campsite plant composition as fragile plants are replaced by trampling-resistant, often non-native, species (Marion & Merriam, 1985a). Regression modeling found that soil compaction can be minimized by selecting sites in areas with thick organic soil horizons, which reduce compactive forces and intermix with underlying mineral soils (Marion & Merriam, 1985b).

A BWCAW campsite restoration, rehabilitation, and maintenance program seeks to enhance the sustainability of campsites kept open to use (Marion & Sober, 1987). Actions that enhance campsite sustainability include a designated camping policy that restricts camping to a limited number of durable sites, visitor entry point quotas to match visitor numbers to site numbers, group size restrictions to limit campsite expansion, and site management actions like tent site creation and canoe landing closure and rehabilitation to concentrate visitor activity, minimize soil loss, and shrink site size. Cole (1992) noted that the spatial concentration of visitor activity on campsites enhances sustainability by increasing the proportion of time spent in the central part of the campsite, reducing trampling to peripheral areas. Campsite research at Isle Royale National Park found that constructing side-hill campsites in sloping terrain was highly effective in limiting the areal extent of camping impact (Marion & Farrell, 2002).

The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) restricts the majority of BWCAW camping to designated campsites, so maintaining their natural conditions and limiting resource impacts over time are core management objectives. The management of campsites able to sustain high use while keeping associated resource impacts within acceptable limits is extremely challenging given the area’s strong resource protection mandate and high visitation.

The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) is a 441,107-ha wilderness area in northeastern Minnesota, administered by the U.S. Forest Service, Superior National Forest. Designated as wilderness by the 1964 Wilderness Act, it has long been one of the most visited wilderness areas, with approximately 150,000 overnight and day-use visitors annually (averaged from 2009 to 2014 data), unchanged from 1982. With over 1000 interconnected lakes and streams, the area’s primary recreational activities include canoeing and fishing. Visitors must obtain wilderness permits from May thru September and group sizes are limited to 9 (10 in 1982). Most of the area is designated as non-motorized. The Forest Service currently provides 1957 designated campsites in the area, most of which have a shoreline boat landing, primitive pit toilet, and steel fire grate. A travel zone-based permitting system matches the distribution of visitors and campsites.

The soils in the area are derived from glacial deposits, covering a thin mantle of glacial-till and lacustrine sediments (Prettyman, 1987). The area receives between 66 and 78 cm of precipitation per year, with 40% falling as snow. The average summer and winter temperatures are 20 °C and −11 °C, respectively. The area’s lakes are interspersed with northern boreal hardwood-conifer forests comprised of pines, fir, spruce, cedar, and hardwoods (Moyle & Moyle, 1977).

Section snippets

Methods

This study replicates Marion’s 1982 doctoral study of 96 wilderness campsites and controls (Marion, 1984). A stratified random sample was employed with sites equally distributed among three use levels and five ecological land types. An effort was made to relocate and measure the same sites in the 2014 study. Sites were omitted if found to be severely affected by wildfire or wind-throw, or had been closed. Eighty-one sites were remeasured in 2014 using the 1982 protocols and several new

Change in campsite conditions

From 1982–2014 the aggregate area of camping disturbance declined by 6.8%, though this change was not statistically significant (p-value = 0.150). However, campsite core areas significantly diminished in size an average of 31 m2, while the areas of adjacent off-site satellite tenting areas increased significantly by 18 m2 (Table 1).

The USFS has sought to discourage use of the satellite tenting areas by placing woody materials on them and providing 3–5 good tent pads within the core campsite area

Discussion

In this section we review the findings relative to our first two research questions: 1) How do campsite conditions change over several decades of continual use, 2) What use-related, environmental, and managerial factors most strongly influence long-term campsite conditions. This longitudinal study addressed significant limitations in prior studies by employing accurate measurements of camping-related ecological change on 81 campsites and paired environmentally-similar control areas assessed in

Conclusion

To preserve protected natural areas in perpetuity while providing recreation opportunities, managers need to consider potential impacts over not one year or ten years, but over decades and centuries. The results of this study document long-term ecological changes and trends in resource conditions on a large sample of wilderness campsites. Campsite conditions over 32 years have changed significantly. While the aggregate area of campsite impact has remained similar, expansion into peripheral

Acknowledgements

This study was funded by the USDI U.S. Geological Survey and the USDA Forest Service, Superior National Forest. The authors would like to thank field assistants Claire Underwood and Jeff Feldhaus for their dedicated work and USFS BWCAW staff Ann Schwaller and Steve Cochran for their administrative and logistical assistance.

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