HUMAN INTERACTION WITH GEOLOGIC PROCESSES: IN CONCERT WITH NATURE; OUT OF SYNC WITH THE ENVIRONMENT? A NATIONAL PARK SERVICE PERSPECTIVE

This presentation is a photo-point in time and space. It examines how humans have interacted with one aspect of natural systems: geologic processes. Within the National Park Service (NPS), we must comply with the agency’s organic act which directs us to “… to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wildlife … and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such a manner … as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations'…” Under closer scrutiny, the challenge of ensuring resources are “unimpaired” while also providing for public “enjoyment, ” challenges our responsibility to be skilled stewards in a broad range of ecological factors, including geologic resources and processes. Performance management, a means of setting goals and measuring results, is sweeping through government, and it has provided the NPS with an opportunity to re-examine it’s objectives. In 2000, NPS leaders approved a performance goal that could have far reaching implications:

Geological Resources — By September 2005 geological processes in 53 parks are inventoried and human influences that affect those processes are identified.

When the goal was approved, a new tool was becoming more widely applied – the geoindicator checklist. It provided a systematic means of evaluating 27 geological indicators of rapid environmental change in the ecosystem. The Park Service adopted the checklist, and through a series of park scoping meetings began implementing the goal. Through the scoping meetings, we are identifying what appear to be conflicts with the “unimpaired” side of our mandate. While more work is needed to address these issues, this presentation provides a glimpse of our discovery. Aldo Leopold, 20th century conservationist, and park superintendent, William Supernaugh, summed it up well – “the art of intelligent tinkering is to keep all the pieces.” Are we guilty of tinkering without knowing what all the pieces are and how they fit together?