Mapping Wilderness Character at Gates of the Arctic — and What a Road Would Do

The Kobuk River, Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve. NPS.

What it is

Wilderness character is not the same everywhere in a wilderness: it varies with how much human influence reaches each place. Like terrain or vegetation, it can be mapped. Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, in Alaska, was the first wilderness in the National Wilderness Preservation System to use such maps to model future threats — here, two proposed routes for an industrial road through the preserve, the Ambler Road.

How the maps are made

1. The team chose measures for the five qualities of wilderness character: untrammeled, natural, undeveloped, solitude or primitive and unconfined recreation, and other features of value.
2. Each measure was mapped from spatial data and put on a common relative scale, so different metrics could be combined.
3. Each was weighted on a 10-point scale for how strongly it affects wilderness character.
4. The weighted maps were added together into a composite of impacts, alongside maps of positive features and of the road's potential effects.

Every map runs from the optimal condition — wilderness character as the Wilderness Act envisions it, with little or no impact — to the most degraded condition.

What the maps show

The maps include the damage from developments described in AIDEA's Ambler Road right-of-way application, plus estimated additional damage if the road became a public access route. Mapping both lets managers anticipate foreseeable consequences of opening large tracts of state and federal land to road access — including visitor uses never before seen in the area.

Threats to wilderness character from the northern (top) and southern (bottom) routes of the proposed Ambler Road. Green is optimal condition; yellow to brown is degraded. NPS.

Conclusion: the northern corridor would have the larger footprint through the Kobuk Preserve and the greater impact on wilderness character — both on designated wilderness and on lands managed as wilderness. It passes close to two large lakes, Walker Lake and Nutuvukti Lake, likely to draw visitors and eventually need campsites, restrooms, trails and new restrictions to protect resources.

Sources

Based on "Wilderness Character Mapping," Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, National Park Service, summarizing K. K. Pace, J. Tricker, A. Baltensperger and P. Landres, Mapping Wilderness Character in Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve (NPS Natural Resource Report, 2017); a work of the United States government in the public domain.