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Empowering National Park Landscape Conservation by Connecting Science and Advocacy

Nicholas J. Moy,Hannah R. Ceasar,Christopher Tracey,R. G. Valdez

Published 2025 in Annals of the American Association of Geographers

ABSTRACT

National parks in the United States garner broad bipartisan support, are well-visited, and harbor many of the country’s most iconic resources. They contribute to, and equally rely on, the integrity of their surrounding landscapes. Because of this, national parks offer a unique opportunity to empower large landscape conservation outside of their boundaries. Beyond-boundary conservation is not new to national parks. A science-driven national park landscape conservation framework that is adaptive to the unique conservation challenges at any national park unit and is applied with conservation advocates and practitioners from the start, however, has not been well described. Here we report on an applied methodology for this framework. We use interviews, facilitated conversation, and geospatial analysis to delineate large landscape study areas centered on national park units across the United States. We then perform spatial analyses to derive a conservation value index that evaluates biodiversity and climate resiliency values. We use the analysis to identify priority areas for conservation advocacy with a focus on elevating protection status. This analysis forms a foundation for supporting advocates at many levels including national park lobbyists, grassroots organizers, land trusts, and regional conservation coalitions. We use geographic information systems analysis as a jumping-off point for collaboratively designed data products that serve specific conservation campaign needs through science communications and storytelling, as authoritative reasoning and legal support, or for data-driven decision support and goals tracking. This article showcases this methodology using the Southern Appalachian landscape as an example. Finally, we discuss the collaborative nature of defining and redefining the framework.

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