BLM Utah GSENM Backcountry Monitoring Project

The Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument (GSENM) has been collecting information on resource and social challenges, and public use trends for 20 years. In particular, GSENM has been monitoring visitation and camping impacts along roads and in the backcountry. This data has been compiled along with briefing reports and graphs of data can be found in Dr. David Coles Visitor Use Management in the Escalante Canyons of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, May 2015. In addition, GSENM has twelve years of backcountry monitoring study data from Northern Arizona University that provides baseline data for the continuation of these types of studies. This project is intended to continue the inventory and monitoring of recreation impacts primarily in backcountry and dispersed areas throughout GSENM. It will include monitoring for both overnight camping and road-based impacts through a network of more than 700 dispersed campsites and 800 miles of roads as well as newly identified recreation nodes in backcountry areas. Monitoring will focus on dispersed recreation impacts at newly identified sites associated with wilderness therapy programs permitted to operate in the backcountry on the south side of the Monument. This project is based on a planning approach entitled Limits of Acceptable Change which assumes that the number and extent of physical human impacts on any recreation site are useful indicators. A variety of indicators were developed historically to measure physical impacts. The recipient will continue to monitor using these existing indicators and will be given access to build on existing data compiled over a 12 year period, as well as develop and implement new monitoring protocols based on indicators and thresholds to address growing day-use visitation impacts for subsequent years of the project.