“Wildfire!  1988 to Today: Documenting the Recovery of Scenic Resources in Yellowstone National Park”

On September 8 at 7:30 pm, John Ellsworth will give an extensively illustrated presentation of his research to the Ted Trueblood Chapter of Trout Unlimited at the MK Nature Center, 600 South Walnut Street in Boise. The public is invited to attend.

In the summer of 1988 Yellowstone National Park experienced the most extensive wildfires in recorded history.  Over 795,000 acres, one-third of the entire Park, was burned.  While the news media focused on the sensational story of death and destruction, the management policies of the National Park Service were scrutinized and criticized.  The debate raged about the role of wildfire in a healthy ecosystem and the implications for the future of this most iconic of our national parks.

The impacts of the wildfires on the scenic resources of the Park became the subject of a research project that endures more than twenty years hence.  John Ellsworth, Utah State University Emeritus Professor of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning, has photographically documented and monitored the changes to the scenery of the Yellowstone landscape since the day the fires went out.  Ellsworth returns to Yellowstone each summer to conduct repeat photography at almost 50 carefully identified sites throughout the Park. His photographs document the impacts of the wildfires on the Park’s scenic and ecological resources through the years, from charred and blackened landscape to varying degrees of green recovery.  The analysis of the implications for managing the effects of wildfire on scenic beauty is crucial to his investigations.

 “The scenery is sometimes taken for granted by land managers,” said Ellsworth, “but since viewing the scenery is the single most important reason people go to Yellowstone, the short- and long-term impacts of wildfire on the Yellowstone scenery cannot be dismissed.”

John C. Ellsworth, FASLA, landscape architect, is Emeritus Professor Dept. of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at Utah State University, and President and Senior Landscape Architect Ellsworth and Associates, landscape architects, inc.

For more information, please contact Richard Prange, TU Program Chairman at (208) 866-1396; rprange@cableone.net