The Changing Geography of National Parks and Protected Areas

This book contains recent geographic work examining the changing geography of protected areas in the U.S. and Europe. These places can be national parks, forests, or other places that are being protected for their significant aesthetic, historical, or environmental values by governments and communities. These places can be studied with reference to their physical environments, the management of their plant and animal life, which places are to be protected, who visits these places (and who does not, and why not), and how we think of these places. This work includes examinations of many parks and issues that affect them, such as land degradation, the social and political geography involved in creating new national park units, visitation by underserved segments of the population, and the changing names of protected areas. It makes use of work using methods and data as diverse as remote sensing, nineteenth survey plats and GIS, and online visitor surveys.

Joe Weber is Professor at the University of Alabama. His research interests include the changing geography of the national park system, and especially changing boundaries and names, as well as the development of the American highway system.

Selima Sultana is Professor at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. Her research interests span various domains, including urban and transportation studies, and national parks. Her research often delves into the interactions between physical environment of neighborhoods and social factors such as class, race/ethnicity, gender, and daily mobility.

The co-editors recently published the book The Parks Belong to the People: The Geography of the National Park System and have been carrying out research on the national park system for over a decade, publishing a half dozen journal articles on the topic. They also co-founded the Protected Areas Specialty Group of the American Association of Geographers, the leading group of academic geographers in the U.S.