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Project News
September - October 2022
See you at the Northeast Alpine Stewardship Gathering at the Craftsbury Outdoor Center (VT) Oct 14-16.
Stay tuned! We will be updating the site shortly with 2021-22 data!
July 2022
WeissLab and our partners are gearing up for another season of data collection. We are looking forward to hearing your thoughts. We will be at Acadia National Park, the Maine High Peaks, the White Mountains, the Green Mountains, the Adirondack Park and Mt. Monadnock. See you on the trails, Northeast!
You can read up on our other projects and the team at https://esfweisslab.weebly.com/
See you at the Northeast Alpine Stewardship Gathering at the Craftsbury Outdoor Center (VT) Oct 14-16.
Stay tuned! We will be updating the site shortly with 2021-22 data!
July 2022
WeissLab and our partners are gearing up for another season of data collection. We are looking forward to hearing your thoughts. We will be at Acadia National Park, the Maine High Peaks, the White Mountains, the Green Mountains, the Adirondack Park and Mt. Monadnock. See you on the trails, Northeast!
You can read up on our other projects and the team at https://esfweisslab.weebly.com/
May 2022
Whew! What a school year! Much to celebrate in our lab including a new publication under review:
Weiss, J. L., Pettingill, P. Longitudinal Study of Alpine Stewardship in Northeast, USA, Reveals Insights into Interpretation for Conservation (in review for 2022)
Alpine stewardship, the active and passive management of recreational trail users has been in practice for decades at popular hiking tourism destinations in the Northeast United States. The past decade has seen a marked increase in hikers, possessing varied and sometimes new motivations, resulting in eroding trails and non-compliant behaviors such as improper human waste disposal and camping on patches of endangered alpine plants. Alpine stewards have a unique practice that is a blend of field education and interpretation. This study has been collecting data on this practice from ten stewardship programs since 2010. The research characterizes alpine stewardship and the philosophies that drive it, the community of practice they formed, and how these actions promote knowledge transfer and institutional memory across the system. Our findings reveal that stewardship program response to hiking trends amounts to a form of co-adaptive management that have implications for interpretation, conservation, and hiking tourism.
In the Times Union May 8 2022: Stewards: Friends of the Mountains, Resource for Hikers https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Stewards-17149059.php
Clarification in article: The Waterman Fund funded key data collection in the 2018-2019. The current funding is a USDA NIFA McIntire-Stennis Grant.
January 2022
Welcome aboard Deanna Sullivan, who is joining our lab team and will be working on this project tin the coming season. We are very excited to share that a total of six sites have committed to ASANE this year: Friends of Acadia at Acadia National Park, Adirondack Mountain Club in the Adirondack High Peaks, Green Mountain Club in the Greens, Maine Appalachian Trail Club and Appalachian Trail Conservancy in the Maine High Peaks, Monadnock Ecological Research and Education and NH Parks at Mt. Monadnock, and AMC and USFS in the White Mountains. I want to thank you all for your continued support and participation in this upcoming data collection season.
May 2021
Dr. Weiss and her lab have been awarded a McIntire-Stennis (USDA NIFA) Grant that will fund data collection and students 2021-2023. During interviews in 2019, members of the alpine stewardship community told us about trends at their sites and asked us to find out more about who hikers are in the 2020s, what motivates them, and where they get their information. Study participants will be contacted about the research project and schedule soon!
January 2021
We thank the Waterman Fund for your support of the 2019 data collection season. Reporting to the Fund is complete, yet analysis continues! Breanna Hummel (SUNY-ESF EFB '21) is conducting an analysis of the interview data from 2019, which will form our rationale for further funding from other sources.
September 2020
Covid-19 Put the ASANE project on hold for a few months, but with the help of undergraduate researchers we're getting back on track!
Whew! What a school year! Much to celebrate in our lab including a new publication under review:
Weiss, J. L., Pettingill, P. Longitudinal Study of Alpine Stewardship in Northeast, USA, Reveals Insights into Interpretation for Conservation (in review for 2022)
Alpine stewardship, the active and passive management of recreational trail users has been in practice for decades at popular hiking tourism destinations in the Northeast United States. The past decade has seen a marked increase in hikers, possessing varied and sometimes new motivations, resulting in eroding trails and non-compliant behaviors such as improper human waste disposal and camping on patches of endangered alpine plants. Alpine stewards have a unique practice that is a blend of field education and interpretation. This study has been collecting data on this practice from ten stewardship programs since 2010. The research characterizes alpine stewardship and the philosophies that drive it, the community of practice they formed, and how these actions promote knowledge transfer and institutional memory across the system. Our findings reveal that stewardship program response to hiking trends amounts to a form of co-adaptive management that have implications for interpretation, conservation, and hiking tourism.
In the Times Union May 8 2022: Stewards: Friends of the Mountains, Resource for Hikers https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Stewards-17149059.php
Clarification in article: The Waterman Fund funded key data collection in the 2018-2019. The current funding is a USDA NIFA McIntire-Stennis Grant.
January 2022
Welcome aboard Deanna Sullivan, who is joining our lab team and will be working on this project tin the coming season. We are very excited to share that a total of six sites have committed to ASANE this year: Friends of Acadia at Acadia National Park, Adirondack Mountain Club in the Adirondack High Peaks, Green Mountain Club in the Greens, Maine Appalachian Trail Club and Appalachian Trail Conservancy in the Maine High Peaks, Monadnock Ecological Research and Education and NH Parks at Mt. Monadnock, and AMC and USFS in the White Mountains. I want to thank you all for your continued support and participation in this upcoming data collection season.
May 2021
Dr. Weiss and her lab have been awarded a McIntire-Stennis (USDA NIFA) Grant that will fund data collection and students 2021-2023. During interviews in 2019, members of the alpine stewardship community told us about trends at their sites and asked us to find out more about who hikers are in the 2020s, what motivates them, and where they get their information. Study participants will be contacted about the research project and schedule soon!
January 2021
We thank the Waterman Fund for your support of the 2019 data collection season. Reporting to the Fund is complete, yet analysis continues! Breanna Hummel (SUNY-ESF EFB '21) is conducting an analysis of the interview data from 2019, which will form our rationale for further funding from other sources.
September 2020
Covid-19 Put the ASANE project on hold for a few months, but with the help of undergraduate researchers we're getting back on track!
Banner photo by Carl Herz. This and other material on this website is copyrighted by Dr. Jill Weiss and the Research Participants. Do not copy or distribute material without permission.
(c) 2021 J. Weiss |