As the Blue Ridge Parkway approaches its 75th anniversary, the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) is cartoon on the GIS (geographic advice systems) ability of acceptance at Warren Wilson College to advice it adduce a plan to administer accessory alley acceptance to the Blue Ridge Parkway over the next 20 years. The angle is aimed at befitting the Blue Ridge Parkway a rural, breathtaking aisle and ensuring that it does not become a disciplinarian alley that diminishes the company experience.
Ashville, NC -- As the Blue Ridge Parkway approaches its 75th anniversary, the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) is cartoon on the GIS (geographic advice systems) ability of acceptance at Warren Wilson College to advice it adduce a plan to administer accessory alley acceptance to the Blue Ridge Parkway over the next 20 years. The angle is aimed at befitting the Blue Ridge Parkway a rural, breathtaking aisle and ensuring that it does not become a disciplinarian alley that diminishes the company experience.
The Blue Ridge Parkway was the aboriginal civic rural access to be conceived, advised and complete for a leisure-oriented active experience. It offers simple accessible acceptance to amazing angle of axial and southern Appalachian rural landscapes and forested mountains alternating its 469 afar breadth through North Carolina and Virginia. The Parkway is the a lot of visited assemblage in the National Park System, and the 20 actor recreational visitors it draws anniversary year are above contributors to the bread-and-butter animation of the 29 counties through which it passes.
The National Park Service is alive on a General Management Plan (GMP) that will adviser action decisions affecting all development and canning alternating the Blue Ridge Parkway for the next 20 years. One of the a lot of cogent action issues adverse the Parkway is how best to administer the arrangement of accessory anchorage acid above it.
How Many Little Roads Should Become Bigger Roads?
Today the Parkway is intersected at-grade by 238 accessory roads, and 39 U.S. and accompaniment primary anchorage cantankerous over or beneath the Parkway. The North Carolina Department of Transportation in accurate has steadily added its requests to widen and advance abounding of the alluvium accessory anchorage as development has occurred abreast the Parkway, and Blue Ridge Parkway administration imposed a adjournment on added alley advance in the mid 1990s to assure the Parkway's accustomed and cultural resources. The adjournment will break in abode until the GMP and the Comprehensive Access Management Plan at its amount are complete.
That's area the National Parks Conservation Association (www.npca.org) comes in. Since 1919, the nonprofit NPCA has been an independent, detached articulation alive to abode above threats adverse the National Park Service. As the Blue Ridge Parkway's General Management Plan takes shape, NPCA is developing a angle apropos the approaching advance of accessory roads.
"The decisions fabricated apropos accessory anchorage will accept a abstruse appulse on the approaching above of the Blue Ridge Parkway," said Greg Kidd, Senior Program Manager at NPCA's Blue Ridge Field Office in Asheville, NC. "Many of the accepted rights-of-way bridge the access in North Carolina are not advanced abundant to axle an bigger road, and afore the moratorium, in those instances, the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NC-DOT) had to seek added esplanade land, triggering an ecology appraisal anniversary time.
"The Comprehensive Access Management Plan that NPCA will adduce will accommodate a adapt for accessory anchorage that can be advised for improvement," Kidd said. "With that information, NC-DOT will be able to accomplish adapted requests that can be handled calmly by Blue Ridge Parkway management, extenuative both agencies ample amounts of time, activity and money. At the aforementioned time, those absorbed in approaching development alternating the Parkway will accept the advice they charge to accomplish complete decisions.
"Above all, we ambition to accomplish abiding that acceptance anchorage to the Blue Ridge Parkway are not fabricated so all-encompassing that the Parkway evolves from accepting a breathtaking aisle to accepting added of a disciplinarian highway. If that happens, we accept afflicted the goose that lays the aureate egg, and the abrogating appulse on tourism that is so important to our bounded abridgement will be great."
To accomplish its angle simple to accept and interpret, and to facilitate decision-making, NPCA's angle will absorb GIS maps that visually present a abundance of advice about anniversary of the anchorage that cantankerous the Parkway at grade, or go over or beneath it, and the development occurring abreast each. Greg Kidd angry to Warren Wilson College (www.warren-wilson.edu) adroitness and acceptance for assistance.
One of the Nation's Greenest Colleges
The baby advanced arts academy just alfresco Asheville in Swannanoa, NC, was accepted for ecology administration continued afore it was fashionable. Warren Wilson was called afresh by Blue Ridge Country annual as one of 14 places and humans that are abstraction the southern Appalachian arena and has won abounding civic accolades for its blooming achievements and research. Learning how to use GIS to capture, appraisal and visually present geographically referenced abstracts so it reveals relationships, patterns and trends is allotment of the class for acceptance in the college's Global Studies program.
Warren Wilson acceptance are able to extend their acquirements and serve the association through the college's awful admired account acquirements program. When Greg Kidd heard David Abernathy, the armchair of Warren Wilson's Global Studies program, accomplish a presentation at the North Carolina Arboretum on addition affair and saw how the admirers anon accepted Abernathy's circuitous accountable because of the GIS-generated maps he used, he knew he had begin a accomplice who could advice NPCA bigger present its Comprehensive Access Management Plan proposal.
When the GIS maps for the aboriginal four counties are accomplished aboriginal in the Fall, users will be able to bang on anniversary accessory alley accessing the artery and see a photo of the aggregation point and a contour including advice such as whether the alley is paved, the amount of accidents that accept occurred there, cartage abstracts for that area of the Parkway, and whether the alley is at brand with the Parkway, or goes over or beneath it. The maps will aswell acknowledge development hot spots abreast the Parkway, assuming the agreeable of accoutrements for development and architecture permits that accept been granted. By amalgam GIS abstracts with accoutrement such as Google Earth, users will be able to see the development that is aboveboard from any viewshed they may accept to examine.
"NPCA staffers and volunteers and Warren Wilson acceptance are putting a lot of assiduous plan into creating a map affluent in advice that users will anon understand," said Warren Wilson College's David Abernathy. "Not alone will users accept the advice faster than if they had to attack through pages and pages of text, but they acceptable will accept a belly acknowledgment to the aggregate of development they see accident abreast the Blue Ridge Parkway and will ambition to crop accomplish to assure it."
"The accord with Warren Wilson acceptance is exciting," said NPCA's Kidd. "We achievement the activity is just the alpha of an advancing relationship, and now the National Park Service will be acquainted of their capabilities, too."
NPCA affairs to abide its Comprehensive Access Management Plan angle to the National Park Service backward 2008 so it can be advised for admittance in the Blue Ridge Parkway's abstract General Management Plan. The National Park Service will accommodate the accessible with abundant opportunities to counterbalance in as the GMP takes shape. The Blue Ridge Parkway expects to agree the GMP in 2010, just in time for the breathtaking byway's 75th celebration celebration.
Collaboration Is the Norm in Asheville, Not the Exception
Collaborations such as the one amid the National Parks Conservation Association and Warren Wilson College are accepted in Asheville, NC, a city-limits in the Blue Ridge mountains that is baby abundant for abeyant ally to calmly acquisition anniversary added and big abundant to affectation a abundance of opportunities (the citizenry in the Asheville city across is about 220,000). The Asheville Hub (www.ashevillehub.com) catalyzes collaborations aural and above the technology, creativity, rejuvenation, sustainability, land/agriculture, beat accomplishment and action clusters that are able and growing in the Asheville area. Through collaborations, these clusters are creating jobs, recruiting companies, acknowledging entrepreneurs, breeding revenue, and advancement the accomplished above of activity for which Asheville and Buncombe County are known.
For added information, contact:
Greg Kidd, National Parks Conservation Association
828/254-5161
David Abernathy, Warren Wilson College
828/713-5084
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