Meet Erika Zambello, a graduate student at the Duke Nicholas School of the Environment and a Stanback Intern at our North Carolina office. You can check out her blog posts here: goo.gl/fH8yeB and read a post she wrote about some of her work for TCF below. I arrived at the top of Waterrock Knob early on a Friday morning, a stiff breeze blowing as I slammed my car door shut and looked out over the landscape below. Waterrock Knob, an overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina, became my survey field site for the next few weeks. At that moment, I couldnt believe how lucky I was. From my vantage point I saw layers and layers of mountains that faded, blue into blue, until they eventually met the sky. To say the spot was beautiful would be an understatement. It was also the perfect survey location. As part of my graduate studies at the Duke Nicholas School of the Environment, I am a Stanback Intern at the North Carolina office of The Conservation Fund. Throughout my eleven weeks of summer interning, I am doing research on the economic advantages that would result from a National Park Service expansion of the Blue Ridge Parkway, an expansion that would include land totaling 5,000 acres and connected to the very spot where I was standing on the parkway that day. There are ecological benefits of course, as well as those for water quality and pollution control, but there is also a strong case to be made for benefits to the local business communities. Over a series of five days throughout the month of May, two volunteers and I talked to over 250 groups of visitors to Waterrock Knob, convincing 167 groups to take a survey that included questions about lodging choices, parkway activities, daily spending, and opinions on a parkway expansion. While the results are only just being tallied, we hope to use the survey data to calculate visitor spending per day in local communities – a direct economic result. If the parkway is expanded and includes additional recreational opportunities visitor numbers will only increase, further providing benefits for both visitors and locals alike. (All photos courtesy of Erika Zambello)
Posted on: Sat, 07 Jun 2014 00:00:02 +0000
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