Before we could go remote, we had to define remote. The feeling of remoteness is a qualitative metric. How remote a person feels varies with a person’s experience, perspective, and comfort zone. For Project Remote, we needed a definition that was quantitative so that it would be non-biased, standard for each state, and most importantly, repeatable in the future.
We began by thinking about our wilderness travels and adventures – what is it about a place that makes us feel remote?
Thoughts of Alaska came to mind and our trek through the Brooks Range of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. We were flown in by a bush pilot 60 miles from the nearest village, dropped off, and told to meet him at a ‘landing strip’ marked by moose antlers. That landing strip happened to be 30 miles away down a nameless valley and up the Sheenjek River valley (details of that trip will be posted soon). Watching our pilot fly away, we realized we were as far from humans and as remote as we could imagine.
If we consider the remotest location in a state, aren’t we really asking where is the farthest place from humans?
In defining a “Remote Spot”, it is extremely important to have a quantitative definition of remoteness that also is repeatable from one observer to the next. We cannot quantify the location of every human at any given time, at least not yet. However, humans tend to congregate in cities, villages, or settlements connected by a vast network of roads. Roads have been mapped and we can use Geographical Information Systems (GIS) to remotely identify their location.
Our quantitative definition for a Remote Spot became that point in a state that is farthest in every direction from a road. Using GIS, we can calculate the exact location within a state that is the farthest distance from a road. Most importantly, this calculation can easily be replicated and repeated in the future to measure changes in remoteness. A Remote Spot is embedded within a buffer of roadless area called a Remote Area Polygon. The area of remote land inside the polygon also can be calculated and compared between states.
While researching the literature on remoteness, we found a timely and informative paper published in Science entitled “Roadless Space of the Conterminous United States,” by Watts et al. (2007). Click here for the abstract.
The authors provide informative discussion on the U.S. road system, its impacts to ecology, and introduce a new metric called “Roadless Volume” (RV) put forward to monitor the balance between ecological costs and societal benefits of having millions of roads slicing up the landscape. Watts et al (2007) also define remoteness in terms of distance to roads (DTR). We contacted the lead author, Ray Watts, who shared their data. We use their calculations to verify our own findings and identify shifts in remoteness.
Upon close examination of the Remote Spots, we found that each state presents challenges to our definition of remoteness. Our definition had to be adjusted to incorporate additional criteria beyond roads, as we describe below.
What if a calculated Remote Spot ends up on an island? Should Remote Spots be on islands, or should they be considered on the mainland only? After some thought and debate (and a phenomenal trip to Florida’s Mainland Remote Spot), we concluded that a Remote Spot could be on an island. If the maximum distance from a road lands on an island, then that tells a story. There are bridges to islands all over the country, and many more inhabited islands are reachable by boat.
There are other important points to consider. What about a remote human settlement or village that is off the road system? For example, in Alaska there are dozens of fly-in only villages located all over the state embedded within the otherwise remote backcountry. We believe that settlements or villages diminish the remoteness of a landscape. Settlements have been mapped and can be incorporated into GIS calculations. So we have added isolated settlements or villages as a criterion for calculating remote spots.
After considering all the above points, we now have a more complete, quantitative definition of remoteness to use while calculating the remotest locations. A state’s Remote Spot is the point that is the farthest straight-line distance from a road or an otherwise isolated human settlement.
We have encountered many more challenges to our quantitative definition of remoteness. Cabins are scattered across the wilderness, particularly in the American West and in Alaska. Overnight shelters along the Appalachian Trail are used frequently by hikers. Lighthouses have become an issue for states that border the ocean. Oil platforms along the Gulf Coast also have us scratching our heads. Public lands visitor centers on islands or in remote areas challenge our thinking. We invite you to follow our expeditions to learn about the unique challenges that each state may present. How would you define your state’s Remote Spot?
This is AWESOME buddy!
When does a trail become a road (it’s a form of development too)? When a motorized vehicle or anything but non-mechanized self-propelled method of travel (what of bikes or canoes) can or does pass over it? How about boats which can and do just drive right up to islands, or for that matter up streams, thereby quickly and technologically closing that remote distance and hence it’s remote value (and RV)? I think you’ll (we’ll) need to examine both terrestrial and island remote sites for a given land unit (states in the present context) to actually sort out these issues.
Count me in, but watch yer topknot! LOVE you guys! HH
Hank, your comments are exceptional and educational. We have thought about many of these things at one time or another…especially while overnighting on the TN Remote Spot with other humans at Siler’s Bald Shelter, App. Trail. Here we were supposed to be in THE remotest location of an entire state, and there was a “house” and people and a trail. Not just any trail, either. THE trail. The Appalachian Trail.
But after all our attempts to create a powerful and complicated Remote Spot definition, we finally realized that humans have the potential to go anywhere and be anywhere. A person could helicopter or parachute into just about anywhere on land. A motorboat could reach anywhere on navigable waters. But these ideas were variables, not permanent structures. So we decided to make a simpler and quantitative definition of “remote,” based on current known geographical data (“permanent human structures”) that could be analyzed in ArcGIS and then have the method repeated in the future to measure any shrink or expansion of remoteness…
We did labor over whether hiking trails or AT shelters should skew the remote spot calculations. We decided that there were simply too many hiking trails and that since people were traveling on foot, and intermittently, then trails should not affect remoteness calculations.
You are so right about taking it state by state. We have already found that each state presents its own story of remoteness and accessibility, even after we apply the exact same definition of remoteness that we developed. For instance: the Gulf of Mexico is loaded with monster oil platforms just off the coastline of many of the Gulf state island remote spots…What the heck do we do about that? Imagine camping on a lonely island tip with a huge rig lighting up the night sky. Anyone have any thoughts about that? Much love back to the Timm Family–Ryan
Hi there
I’m exploring this same issue of remoteness in a different context. I’m interested in classifying energy resources by their distance from population centres. As such, I have a question, ‘should the distances be weighted by population?’ Is a point 500 miles from a city (pop > 100,000) more or less remote than a point 500 miles from a village (pop < 1000)?
I'd be interested in the tools that you used to identify these points.
Cheers,
Mik
Very impressive. Looking forward to seeing y’all again and hopefully join on one of these trips one day. Hope all is well.