Master of Science

thesisThe Lake Mountains is the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) - Salt Lake Field Office's (SLFO) largest management area within the wildland-urban interface. According to Radeloff, Hammer, Stewart, Fried, Holcomb, and McKeefry, the wildland-urban interface (WUI) is "the area where houses meet or intermingle with undeveloped wildland vegetation." The Lake Mountains is a set of mountains bordered on the east by the town of Saratoga Springs and to the north and west by Eagle Mountain City. Due to its accessibility and proximity to residential areas, the Lake Mountains provide an opportunity for different recreational activities, ranging from target shooting, hiking, mountain biking, hunting, camping, bird watching, and viewing cultural resources. Most notably, the Lake Mountains receive 20,000 to 50,000 visitors per year with associated impacts that include public safety hazards, increased potential of wildfire, cultural resource damage, and property damage (e.g., bed post being shot through window), and litter. Currently, the BLM is conducting a Land Use Plan Amendment for 8,124 acres of the Lake Mountains to help mitigate these impacts. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to assist the BLM with their plan amendment, as well as the overall management of the Lake Mountains by addressing three objectives: 1) to analyze user preferences for terrain and infrastructure in the Lake Mountains area; 2) to display visitor preferences through recreation suitability maps; and 3) to determine adequate recreation zones based on the data to prevent and reduce recreational conflict within the WUI. I used a mixed-methods approach involving semi-structured interviews (n = 20) and survey questionnaires (n = 405) distributed onsite to a representative sample of Lake Mountains recreationists. The preference ratings for variables contained in the questionnaire were indexed, mapped, and analyzed using traditional recreation suitability mapping (RSM) techniques. The findings showed that target shooters and OHV riders had similar preferences to each other. Moreover, campers and hikers shared similar preferences to each other in this study