National Park Service Economic Trends and Implications for Digital Asset Documentation and Infrastructure Investment
Category: Research Poster
Author(s): Paris Counts
Presenter(s): Paris Counts
Mentors(s): Stacy Lynn
We examine how the National Park Service documents and preserves cultural and natural resources through digital archives. Focusing on parks, monuments, recreation areas, and historic sites in Colorado, it aims to evaluate whether financial resources and visitation rates influence the number of documented assets. Threats such as natural disasters and funding instability endanger both physical assets and their preservation within national parks. NPGallery serves as a centralized digital archive that safeguards important documentation, irreplaceable landscapes, artifacts, and community heritage. Our goal is to connect national park economics and visitation patterns with data management practices. We aim to understand long-term conservation and documentation strategies by analyzing property statistics from Infrastructure fact sheets, the number of digital artifacts in NPGallery, and insights from digital data managers. Results indicate that visitation and economic activity are strongly linked to the count of digital assets. Increased funding leads to a higher likelihood of artifacts being preserved through NPGallery. However, many park representatives managing digital archives are unaware of the NPGallery system, which suggests that while more funding improves digital asset preservation, implementing a unified digital database similar to NPGallery could enhance the effectiveness of asset protection.