Using aircraft tracking data to estimate the geographic scope of noise impacts from low-level overflights above parks and protected areas.

Sightseeing air tours have proven to be a challenging management issue for many tourist destinations around the world, especially at locations meant to protect natural and cultural resources and wilderness character. Two of the primary challenges with managing air tours are a lack of information about their travel patterns and how such patterns result in a measurable noise impact to listeners. Recent studies have highlighted the usefulness of newer technology for tracking aircraft travel patterns, particularly over national parks.

Rapid Resource Change and Visitor-Use Management: Social-ecological Connections at the Bonneville Salt Flats.

Parks and protected areas are complex, and managers often need integrated social-ecological science-based information that illuminates the dynamic interactions between the biophysical and social processes. However, modeling and determining social-ecological connections are difficult due to disciplinary paradigms, divergent research questions, and data sets representing different scales. During this investigation, researchers sought to evaluate social-ecological linkages at a large salt pan (Bonneville Salt Flats) in western Utah (US).