How much can we use the environment without spoiling what we find so valuable about it? Determining the carrying capacity of parks and related areas is a perennial question whose urgency grows each year as the number of visits continues to increase. Parks and Carrying Capacity represents a comprehensive assessment of the issue, as it: • offers a historical and conceptual treatment of carrying capacity • describes and illustrates research approaches for assessing carrying capacity, including qualitative and quantitative surveys, normative theory and methods, visual research approaches, trade-off analysis, and simulation modeling • examines management alternatives for limiting the environmental and social impacts of visitor use • considers the broader question of environmental management and how the issue of carrying capacity can be applied more generally • discusses how the theory and methods associated with managing the carrying capacity of parks and protected areas might be extended to other areas of environmental management The book includes a series of case studies that describe research programsdesigned to support analysis and management of carrying capacity at eight diverse units of the U.S. National Park System, and an additional case study that explores how the foundational components of carrying capacity (formulating indicators and standards, monitoring, and adaptive management) are being applied in an increasing number of environmental and natural resources fields to address the growing urgency of sustainability. Parks and Carrying Capacity is an important new work for faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, and researchers in outdoor recreation, park planning and management, and natural resource conservation and management, as well as for professional planners and managers involved with park and outdoor recreation related agencies and nongovernmental organizations.