Deriving artificial models of visitors from dispersed patterns of use in the Sierra Nevada Wilderness, California

Natural resource managers are faced with a complex problem of understanding human use patterns and associated impacts in dispersed recreation wilderness settings. While conventional approaches to modelling have limited use in acquiring and understanding such complex associations, spatial simulation models have been proposed as an alternative. The purpose of this paper is to describe a project whose focus is on a dispersed recreation context of backpacking trips and commercial packstock operations in the John Muir Wilderness in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California. This paper will discuss the data collection and synthesis to derive agent profiles and rules as a precursor to the development of a dynamic, agent based model that represents the spatial distribution of visitation patterns.