Recreation Facility Analysis
Glossary of Terms
- Accessibility
- A term referring to the degree to which recreation opportunities,
facilities, or programs meet current legal, social, and design
requirements to be utilized by persons of varying physical and mental
abilities.
- Actual Expenditure
- The amount of operating funds actually spent, whether or not
National Quality Standards are met.
- Admin Org
- The Infra data entry code for the organization upon which the
Recreation Site falls geographically.
- Allocated Dollars
- Funds distributed by WO by budget line item.
- Appropriation
- Funding received at agency level through Congressional action.
Agencies, in turn, make allocations.
- Backlog
- The term “backlog” is no longer in use by the agency – the proper
term is “deferred maintenance”. From the 10/98 Deferred Maintenance
Standard Definitions, page 6: “The backlog estimate predated
the standard definitions and represents a mix of repair, rehabilitation,
replacement, decommissioning, and capital improvement, including
expansion And provision of new, complementary facilities.”
- BFES
- Budget Formulation and Execution System is an allocation-driven
field-based capability driven budget process.
- BLI
- Budget line item; an identifiable group of activities recognized in
the budget appropriation process and by Congress. See budget program
codes.
- Budget Program Code
- CMFC – Includes maintenance and capital improvement
for FA&O, research, developed recreation facilities, and dams.
- CMTL – Includes operations, maintenance, and
capital improvement of new and existing system trails, trail bridges,
and associated trail appurtenances.
- NFRW – Includes operation of developed sites,
management of general Forest areas, provision of interpretation and
education, administration of recreation special use authorizations,
management of wildernesses, and management of heritage resources.
- Capital Improvement
- The construction, installation or assembly of a new fixed asset, or
the significant alteration, expansion, or extension of an existing fixed
asset to accommodate a change of purpose.
- CIP
- The Capital Investment Program
- Concentrated use area (CUA)
- A relatively undeveloped recreation site or area receiving
expenditures of management time and/or dollars because recreation use
leaves evident impacts such as litter, vandalism, or soil compaction.
Any amenities in a CUA are placed and managed primarily for resource
protection rather than user convenience.
- Contributed Services
- Work accomplished through volunteers, hosts, partners,
concessionaires, etc; monetary value can be based on the cost of the
same amount of work accomplished through force account. Sometimes
referred to as “contributed program”.
- Cost Pool
- Aggregated deductions from the recreation program allocation usually
associated with the indirect expenses of the program.
- Cost to meet National Quality Standards, Direct
- Labor, supplies & materials, and service costs directly
associated with meeting national quality standards in a specific
developed site, trail, general Forest area, and for the administration
of existing recreation special use permits and the providing of specific
existing Interpretive services. These costs are captured in the
following recreation components:
- DEVELOPED SITES
- GENERAL FOREST AREAS
- HERITAGE RESOURCES
- INTERPRETIVE SERVICES
- RECREATION SPECIAL-USE PERMIT ADMINISTRATION TRAILS
- Cost to meet National Quality Standards, Indirect
- The costs that support but cannot be directly associated with
specific projects in the meeting of national quality standards for the
recreation program components: Developed Sites, Trails, General Forest
Areas, Recreation Special-use Permit Administration, Heritage, and
Interpretive Services. The indirect cost for each component is an
additive cost to the “direct” costs to meet standards in each of the
five field components.
- Cost to meet National Quality Standards, Maintenance
- The cost to meet standards in the Key Measure: Condition of
Facilities. Funds needed to support work performed to ensure service or
repair of facilities during the year in which they occur, including
preventive and/or cyclic maintenance performed in the year it is
scheduled to occur. Unscheduled or catastrophic failures of components
or assets may need to be repaired as part of annual maintenance.
- Cost to meet National Quality Standards, Operations
- The cost to meet standards in the Key Measures: Health &
Cleanliness, Resource Setting, Safety & Security, and Responsiveness
in each management component (e.g.: Developed Sites, Trials, GFAs, and
the operations areas of the components IS, Heritage, Wilderness, and
RSUP).
- Cost, Critical
- The cost of labor, supplies, and materials to meet “critical”
National Quality Standards for operations activities. Critical standards
are defined as those that, if not met, the resulting conditions pose a
high probability of immediate or permanent loss to people or property.
If they cannot be met, due to budget or other constraints, immediate
action must be taken to correct or mitigate the problem. Immediate
action may include closing to public use the facility, site, trail,
area, permit, or portions of the affected site, trail or area. National
critical standards include those that address: (1) Visitors are not
exposed to human waste; (2) Water, wastewater, and sewage treatment
systems meet federal, state and local water quality regulations; (3)
Effects from recreation use do not conflict with environmental laws
(such as ESA, NHPA, Clean Water, TES, etc); (4) High-risk conditions do
not exist in developed recreation sites; and (5) Utility inspections
meet federal, state, and local requirements. Regional critical standards
may be developed.
- Cost, Needed
- The cost to meet National Quality Standards--including “critical”
standards--assuming some or all of the work to meet standard is
accomplished at the hourly rate of the current workforce, including
alternative sources such as contributed labor. The work to meet standard
that is NOT accomplished by the current crew is costed at the hourly
rate of properly graded employees (Reference Crew).
- Cost, Reference
- The cost to meet National Quality Standards (including “critical”
standards) assuming all of the work to meet standard is accomplished at
the hourly rate of a properly graded Force Account workforce and
selected services are provided by appropriate vendors per current
national business rules.
- Demand
- Demand terms are those that describe who (NVUM, age,
ethnicity, etc.) is coming from where (zip code maps) to do
what (NVUM activity popularity), where (location part of
supply), for how long (activity duration), and how
often (frequency). Demand also asks what the future demand is
likely to be (Census/growth projections). Demand can be summarized by
answering these 8 questions:
- How many are visiting?
- Where are they from?
- What is happening in that Market Zone?
- What is happening in the region (small “r”)?
- Who Lives There?
- What Are Recreation Preferences?
- What is visitor satisfaction now?
- Description of National Forest visits
- Developed Site
- A discrete place containing a concentration of facilities and
services used to provide recreation opportunities to the public and
evidencing a significant investment in facilities and management under
the direction of an administrative unit in the National Forest System.
- Development Scale
- The classification of the scale of development of recreation
facilities. Scale ranges from 1, “Almost No Site Modification” to 5,
“Extensive Site modification. Development scales are defined by levels
of site modifications, type of construction material, management
controls, design style, development density, and services offered and
site modification allowed.
- FA&O
- Fire, Administrative and Other, referring to facilities other
than recreation, includes ranger stations, work centers, other
administrative facilities, and Forest headquarters.
- FDFD
- Budget Line item for Recreation fees revenue. Includes
- Recreation fees Demonstration Site Revenue). 80% of visitor use
fees collected though Recreation Recreation feesnstration authority.
This budget code denotes only the portion of recreation fees revenue
that is available at the point of collection for use on-site.
- FDCL (15% for collections) and
- FDAS (5% to be used at agency discretion).
- Fee Demo
- A pilot study, Recreation Fee Demonstration Program, authorized by
Congress in 1996 (PL-104-134) that directs Federal land-management
agencies to demonstrate the feasibility of user generated cost recovery
for operating and maintaining recreation areas sites, and habitat
enhancement projects on Federal lands administered through the
Departments o Agriculture and Interior. Eighty percent of the user fees
stay at the collecting site to be used for repair and deferred
maintenance projects, interpretation and signage, habitat or facility
enhancement, and annual operation, maintenance and law enforcement
purposes relating to public use.
- Recreation fees Expenditures
- Include the following categories:
- Repairs and deferred maintenance, including projects relating to
health and
- Safety. Work categories include:
- Interpretation and signage
- Habitat and facility enhancement
- Resource preservation
- Annual operation, including fee collection
- Maintenance
- Law enforcement related to public use
- [See Omnibus Consolidated Rescissions and Appropriation Act of
1996 (PL 104-1134), sec 315(c)(3); RO file letter 4/24/96]
- FTE
- Full time equivalent of an employee, generally based on 260 working
days.
- Gap
- The difference between the work activities funded to be accomplished
at a site or a program and what is required to meet National Quality
Standards.
- General Forest Area (GFA)
- General Forest Areas are all lands available for recreation use and
outside of Wilderness, developed sites, trails and administrative sites.
The General Forest Areas are comprised of concentrated use areas [CUAs]
(see Concentrated Use Areas). CUAs can include front- and/or
backcountry campsites, parking areas, pullouts and landings, river and
road corridors, lake surfaces, and day use areas such as OHV areas,
climbing areas, target shooting areas, etc. Amenities or constructed
features inside GFAs are primarily for resource protection.
- Heritage Sites/Assets
- Remnants of past cultures that remind us of the centuries-old
relationship between people and the land (from National Heritage
Strategy); property, plant, or equipment that are unique for one
or more of the following reasons: (1) historical or natural
significance; (2) cultural, educational or artistic/aesthetic
significance; or (3) significant architectural characteristics.
- I&E
- (Formerly known as Interpretation and
Education) now termed “Interpretive Services” (IS). IS is one of
five components that comprise the Recreation Program.
- Infra
- The Corporate Integrated Inventory System (CIIS). An integrated
database for collection, storage, and use of feature, land unit,
facility, utility, work item, cost, accessibility, and real property
data. For recreation management, INFRA provides the opportunity to enter
information to derive O&M costs, recreation funding shortfalls,
recreation use data, accessibility information, and constructed feature
inventory conditions. INFRA brings together tabular and spatial
technology. INFRA provides information critical to utilizing the
Meaningful Measures for Quality Recreation Management system.
- Interpretive Association
- A nonprofit, tax-exempt corporation or organization whose purpose is
extending and enhancing the ability of the Forest Service to provide
customer service to National Forest visitors. Interpretive Associations
work cooperatively with the Forest Service in educating the public about
natural and cultural issues on public lands.
- Key Measure
- A defined category of recreation management quality, responding to
user preferences, needs and expectations. Each Key Measure is defined by
a set of standards. Key Measures include Health and Cleanliness, Safety
and Security, Resource Setting, Responsiveness and Condition of
Facilities (Developed Sites, Trails, and GFA), Administration and
Monitoring (Recreation Special-use Permits) and Communication
Effectiveness, Responsiveness, and Safety & Security (Interpretive
Services).
- Leveling
- The process of reaching concurrence among peers that each unit’s
costs to meet standards are accurate and reflect consistent
understanding and application of program business rules and data entry
instruction; initially conducted between ranger districts (or Forest
sub-units) to reach concurrence at the Forest level.
- LRMP
- Forest Land and Resource Management Plan, a plan that guides all
natural resource management activities and establishes standards and
guidelines for those activities on National Forest System lands of a
given National Forest.
- Maintenance, Annual
- Work performed to maintain serviceability, or repair failures during
the year in which they occur. Includes preventive and/or cyclic
maintenance performed in the year in which it is scheduled to occur.
Unscheduled or catastrophic failures of components or assets may need to
be repaired as a part of annual maintenance.
- Maintenance, Deferred
- Maintenance that was not performed when it should have been or when
it was scheduled and which, therefore, was put off or delayed for a
future period. When allowed to accumulate without limits or
consideration of useful life, deferred maintenance leads to
deterioration of performance, increased costs to repair, and decrease in
asset value. Code compliance (e.g. life safety, ADA, OSHA,
environmental, etc.), Forest Plan Direction, Best Management Practices,
Biological Evaluations, other regulatory or Executive Order compliance
requirements, or applicable standards not met on schedule are considered
deferred maintenance.
- Maintenance, Preventive
- Scheduled servicing, repairs, inspections, adjustments, and
replacement of parts that result in fewer breakdowns and fewer premature
replacements, and help achieve the expected life of the fixed asset.
Inspections are a critical part of preventive maintenance as they
provide the information for scheduling maintenance and evaluating its
effectiveness.
- Managing Org
- The code for the organization that actually manages the site.
Sometimes the managing unit is different from the legally responsible
unit (Admin Org).
- Meaningful Measures
- The MEANINGFUL MEASURES FOR QUALITY RECREATION MANAGEMENT system
(MM). MM is a six-step, cyclical, site and project level management
system, and has been adopted by the FS-RH&WR as its overarching
business system. Application of the MM system provides professional,
accountable, and visitor-responsive site and project-level management.
Accomplishment is measured through established standards of quality for
recreation opportunity outputs. The system determines costs to attain
quality outputs; sets priorities for work to be accomplished and budget
allocations; and measures the actual success at producing quality
opportunity outputs.
- Monitoring
- Techniques used to validate standards, determine visitor
expectations, needs and preferences; determine customer satisfaction
trends; measure program, such as recreation, outputs; and to assess
resource conditions.
- National Forest Visit
- The entry of one person upon a National Forest to participate in
recreation activities for an unspecified period of time. A recreation
visit can be composed of visits to multiple sites.
- National Register of Historic Places
- The National Register of Historic Places is the Nation's official
list of cultural resources worthy of preservation. Authorized under the
National Historic Preservation Act of 1966,the National Register is part
of a national program to coordinate and support public and private
efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect our historic and
archeological resources. Properties listed in the Register include
districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects that are
significant in American history, architecture, archeology, engineering,
and culture. The National Register is administered by the National Park
Service, which is part of the U.S. Department of the Interior.
- National Visitor Use Monitoring (NVUM)
- A systematic process to estimate annual recreation and other uses of
National Forest lands through user surveys. See NVUS, below. The NVUM
process includes a survey to develop statistically accurate estimates of
national Forest visitor use; the survey began in 2000 and will continue
indefinitely, during which 20% of all national forests will participate
in a given year. Use information is gathered in five categories: day use
developed sites (DUDS), overnight use developed sites (OUDS), general
Forest areas (GFAs), Wilderness and viewing corridors.
- Niche
- Niche is the specific focus area within which the unit is
most suited to add value to the agency and society and from which
features in recreation sites facilitate the unique opportunities and
benefits. Niche is the best “fit” in which to operate sites given the
context in which they exist. It is simply another term to reflect how
the broader agency role or mission is narrowed to provide a more precise
interpretation of how the broader mission will be delivered by the
recreation sites and opportunities on a specific unit within its unique
context.
- The Forest’s niche has been referred to as the overlap between
“assets” and customer demand, both existing and potential, including new
market segments. Assets may include geology, topography, climate,
vegetation, and history that make the Forest attractive for specific
activities and experiences. Assets are also “special places” that make
the Forest unique and highly valued by communities. Frequently, these
places have been nationally recognized by designations such as
Wilderness Areas, Scenic Byways, Historic Sites, Wild and Scenic Rivers,
or National Recreation Areas.
- O&M
- Operations and maintenance; includes the activities and resources
required to annually operate and maintain recreation sites at a level of
quality which meets their management objectives and customer
satisfaction. Costs associated with O&M are generally recurrent, as
opposed to capital investment costs that are generally one-time and
non-recurrent.
- Operating Season
- The operating season is the number of days each year the developed
site is operated for public use. Includes the High, Peak, Moderate, and
Low Use Levels. Minimally, critical standards are being met. Do not
include in the operating season those days the site is physically open
but not being operated for use (meeting critical standards). If the site
is not being managed to at least meet critical standards, it cannot be
considered operational.
- PAOT
- An acronym for Persons-At-One-Time; a measure of facility or site designed recreation carrying capacity, particularly for
developed sites. National conventions include 5 persons per family
picnic/camp unit, 3.5 persons per parking lot stall at a trailhead or
visitor center, 1.5 persons per motorcycle parking stall and 40 persons
per tour bus parking stall.
- Partnership
- Voluntary, mutually beneficial and desired arrangement between the
Forest Service and another or others to accomplish mutually agreed-on
objectives consistent with the agency’s mission and serving the public’s
interest.
- Planned Expenditures
- The planned expenditure of a unit’s existing NFRW budget dollars.
May be equal to the combination of “needed” and/or “critical” costs.
- Recreation Capacity
- A measure of the number of people a site can reasonably accommodate
at one time, sometimes measured as PAOT.
- Recreation Management Systems
- A range of systems developed by the Forest Service to assure the
efficient, effective, and responsive provision of a wide spectrum of
high quality and accessible outdoor recreation opportunities and related
amenities. These systems are: Meaningful Measures for Quality
Recreation Management (MM), the Scenery Management
System (SMS), the Recreation Opportunity Spectrum (ROS), and Outcomes Based Management (OBM).
- Recreation Program Management (RPM)
- RPM categorizes the cost of management activities (generally
overhead or indirect costs) required to support the production of field
level quality opportunity outputs in the five recreation field
components (Developed Sites, Trails, GFA, IS, RSUP). RPM has two
categories: Program Management and Program
Support. Program Management represents the
costs for all the tasks and activities associated with providing
recreation program leadership at the district, Forest, regional, and
national levels. Program Support is the expense
incurred by the Recreation program for workforce management services and
support. Indirect support includes administrative services, rents,
utilities, communications, fleet and property, training, and other
workforce management costs associated with the positions providing those
support services. The RPM cost for each category is an additive cost to
the costs to meet standards in each of the five field components. The
RPM cost is additive at and for each level of the agency: district,
Forest, regional, national.
- Recreation Site
- A discrete area on a Forest that provides recreation opportunities,
receives use, and requires a management investment to operate and/or
maintain to standard.
- Site Type
- The type of recreation site. Recreation sites are divided into
several categories (i.e., “Family Campground”, “Fishing Site”,
“Trailhead”, “Interpretive Site Minor”, “Horse Camp”, etc.).
- Site Visit
- In context of NVUM, the entry of one person to a National Forest
site or area to participate in recreation activities for an unspecified
period of time.
- Special-Use Authorization
- A permit, term permit, temporary permit, lease, or easement, or
other written instrument that grants rights or privileges of occupancy
and use subject to specified terms and conditions on National Forest
System land.
- Standard, National Quality (as in
maintaining/managed/operated/provided/administered to standard)
- A measurement of quality based on visitor expectations, needs,
preferences, and resource condition for a particular component; a
baseline measure that helps define the corporate level of quality the
Forest Service wants to provide the public at full service levels; used
for estimating the total cost of providing quality opportunities for
visitors. The Meaningful Measures management system
provides a structure that identifies five (5) recreation program
components. Each component is comprised of several Key Measures; each
Key Measure is a category made up of several standards (National
Quality Standards); and each Standard is defined by a set of work
tasks.
- Standard, Regional Required
- Prior to initiating the Recreation Site Facility Master Planning
Process, each Region must identify from the Recreation Site National
Quality Standards those standards that must be met to keep a site open.
At a minimum, each Region must meet the National ‘Critical’ Standards,
but the Region may choose to expand the critical standard set for the
purpose of Facility Master Planning. This standard set is the Regional
Required Standards.
- If a site cannot be operated to at least meet the regionally
required standards, it must be closed. The Regional RHWR Director and
key Recreation Site staff determine the required standards.
- Supply
- Supply terms are ones of settings in ROS terms
with unique (SOP) descriptions; and should have capacity and
opportunity terms. Supply also speaks to features that facilitate opportunities.
- Use Level
- Four levels of customer use that necessitates different workforce
composition and site visit frequencies to meet National Quality
Standards. Use Levels include “Peak”, “High”, “Moderate”, “Low”, and
“Closed”.
- Visitor demographics
- The profile of visitors as described by such factors as race,
ethnicity, gender, age, etc.
- Visitor satisfaction
- A measurement, from the visitor perspective, of how well the FS is
meeting the visitor expectations in delivering quality recreation
opportunities. The outcome is a measure of how satisfied the visitor is
with the agency delivery of particular recreation opportunities. Visitor
satisfaction is also measured in comparison with Visitor Importance.
Visitor importance measures on the same scale as visitor satisfaction
how relatively important the visitor perceives each of the measured
recreation opportunities.
- Wild & Scenic River
- A river selected for nomination and/or designation through the Wild
and Scenic Rivers Act of 1968 for possessing outstandingly remarkable
scenic, recreational, geologic, fish and wildlife, historic, cultural or
other similar values.
- Wilderness
- A Congressionally-designated area that is part of the National
Wilderness Preservation System established through Wilderness Act of
1964; generally larger than 5000 acres and retaining its primeval
character, where nature and its forces work undisturbed by human
activity.
- YCC
- Youth Conservation Corps, a human resource program that provides
natural resource opportunities for young people.
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CONTACT INFORMATION |
If you would like to learn more about the Southwestern Region's
Recreation Facility Analysis (RFA) process, contact
the Regional RFA Coordinator
at:
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