Defining, Measuring, Monitoring, and Managing the Sustainability of Parks for Outdoor Recreation

Authors

  • Robert Manning
  • William Valliere
  • Laura Anderson
  • Rebecca Stansfield McCown
  • Peter Pettengill
  • Nathan Reigner
  • Steven Lawson
  • Peter Newman
  • Megha Budruk
  • Daniel Laven
  • Jeffrey Hallo
  • Logan Park
  • James Bacon
  • Daniel Abbe
  • Carena van Riper
  • Kelly Goonan

Keywords:

Sustainability, parks, outdoor recreation, management-by-objectives, indicators, standards

Abstract

Sustainability of parks for outdoor recreation is a long-standing and increasingly urgent issue. Sustainability is an intuitively appealing concept, but it is often seen as so broad that it can be daunting to define and manage in an operational way. The purpose of this paper is to suggest that management-by-objectives frameworks used in contemporary park and outdoor recreation management can be useful in defining, measuring, monitoring, and managing the sustainability of parks for outdoor recreation. The paper presents and describes a generalizable management-by-objectives framework that can be used for this purpose. This framework requires 1) formulating indicators and standards, 2) monitoring indicators, and 3) managing to ensure that standards are maintained. This approach is informed by principles derived from the broad environmental and sustainability literature, including carrying capacity, common property resources, ecosystem management, adaptive management, environmental justice, and ecotourism. Defining, measuring, monitoring, and managing sustainability can be supported by a program of natural and social science research, and this paper offers examples of how research can support formulation of indicators and standards, monitoring and management. Given advances in addressing the sustainability of parks for outdoor recreation—a set of environmental concepts and principles to draw on, an associated management-by-objectives framework, a growing set of research approaches, an array of management practices, and a number of hopeful case studies—application of sustainability to parks and outdoor recreation should move ahead more deliberately.

Downloads

Published

2011-09-27

Issue

Vol. 29 No. 3 (2011): Special Issue–Sustainability

Section

Regular Papers

License

Sagamore Publishing LLC (hereinafter the “Copyright Owner”)

Journal Publishing Copyright Agreement for Authors

PLEASE REVIEW OUR POLICIES AND THE PUBLISHING AGREEMENT, AND INDICATE YOUR ACCEPTANCE OF THE TERMS BY CHECKING THE ‘AGREE TO THE TERMS OF THIS COPYRIGHT NOTICE’ CHECKBOX BELOW.

I understand that by submitting an article to Journal of Park and Recreation Administration, I am granting the copyright to the article submitted for consideration for publication in Journal of Park and Recreation Administration to the Copyright Owner. If after consideration of the Editor of the Journal of Park and Recreation Administration, the article is not accepted for publication, all copyright covered under this agreement will be automatically returned to the Author(s).

THE PUBLISHING AGREEMENT

Assignment of Copyright

I hereby assign to the Copyright Owner the copyright in the manuscript I am submitting in this online procedure and any tables, illustrations or other material submitted for publication as part of the manuscript in all forms and media (whether now known or later developed), throughout the world, in all languages, for the full term of copyright, effective when the article is accepted for publication.

Reversion of Rights

Articles may sometimes be accepted for publication but later be rejected in the publication process, even in some cases after public posting in “Articles in Press” form, in which case all rights will revert to the Author.

Retention of Rights for Scholarly Purposes

I understand that I retain or am hereby granted the Retained Rights. The Retained Rights include the right to use the Preprint, Accepted Manuscript, and the Published Journal Article for Personal Use and Internal Institutional Use.

All journal material is under a 12 month embargo. Authors who would like to have their articles available as open access should contact Sagamore-Venture for further information.

In the case of the Accepted Manuscript and the Published Journal Article, the Retained Rights exclude Commercial Use, other than use by the author in a subsequent compilation of the author’s works or to extend the Article to book length form or re-use by the author of portions or excerpts in other works.

Published Journal Article: the author may share a link to the formal publication through the relevant DOI.

Author Representations

  • The Article I have submitted to the journal for review is original, has been written by the stated author(s) and has not been published elsewhere.
  • The Article was not submitted for review to another journal while under review by this journal and will not be submitted to any other journal.
  • The Article contains no libelous or other unlawful statements and does not contain any materials that violate any personal or proprietary rights of any other person or entity.
  • I have obtained written permission from copyright owners for any excerpts from copyrighted works that are included and have credited the sources in the Article.
  • If the Article was prepared jointly with other authors, I have informed the co-author(s) of the terms of this Journal Publishing Agreement and that I am signing on their behalf as their agent, and I am authorized to do so.