UAF leads national BLM research project
March 31, 2015
907-474-5042
3/31/15
University of Alaska Fairbanks researchers are leading a multistate team to develop a survey guide for the Bureau of Land Management.
The project will provide a standardized process and develop a managers’ guide for administering surveys to recreational users of BLM sites nationwide. The guide will explain how to gather data and how to analyze and incorporate it into planning to help ensure recreation management is consistent with the desires of the public.
Peter Fix, UAF associate professor of outdoor recreation management, has been conducting research for the BLM for the past nine years. He heads up the project, which involves researchers from Colorado and Arizona who have worked extensively with the BLM in the southwest United States. The research team is compiling information from prior BLM research. They will use it to develop a guide that will include visitor survey and focus group protocols for the BLM’s national recreation planning strategy.
The guide is expected to be completed by January 2016. In the three years after completion, the BLM anticipates the survey could be administered at 108 sites across the 12 states where the agency manages land.
“If BLM managers are writing a resource management plan with a recreation component, they can use these tools,” Fix said. “It will give consistency in data collection.”
The manual will provide BLM managers the ability to do these tasks in-house and compare data across sites. “They can look for patterns and trends,” Fix said. “They’ll be able to understand the outcomes of the recreation that takes place on the land.”
Field staff without a lot of survey research experience should be able to use the new tool, Fix said. “If field staff can gather data and incorporate it into the planning process, it will be a successful project.”
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