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Prairie Grove Battlefield Pilot Study

 

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Prairie Grove Battlefield Pilot Study

 

As part of the American Battlefield Protection Plan established in 1991, CAST, under contract of the National Park Service in 1993 completed an intensive study of the Prairie Grove Civil War Battlefield. The purpose of this " pilot project" was to develop a methodology for evaluating the twenty-five Civil War Battlefields on the National Park Service's "Most Threatened" list.
Prairie Grove Battlefield is located 12 miles southwest of Fayetteville, Arkansas near the community of Prairie Grove. The dramatic growth taking place in northwest Arkansas has aroused the concern of the National Park Service for the future of the 4,500-acre battlefield, of which, at that time, only 130 acres belonged to the Prairie Grove Battlefield State Park. Urban sprawl and/or expansion of commercial poultry production adjacent to the park could lead to the destruction of the park's visual integrity.

The project's goal was to answer questions for the National Park Service that would inform decisions about land or easement purchases that could protect the visual integrity of the park from a visitor's perspective.

  • What does a visitor to the park see as he/she tours the battlefield?
  • What are the relevant development pressures on the battlefield and adjacent lands?
  • What areas of the battlefield are most important, both historically and for the visitors' interpretation of the battle?


The team provided NPS with three Geographic Information Systems models that address these issues: Development Pressure, Important Viewsheds,and Visual Integrity. The Development Pressure Model is based on the economics of development on the land adjacent to the battlefield. Data for this model includes available utilities, soils, slope, and land use factors that impose some degree of limitation on future development. The 1990 Census Data were analyzed and used along with economic data to forcast additional pressures from nearby town centers. Important Viewsheds, or models of what can be seen, were calculated for those positions along the driving and walking tours that are most important to visitors for interpretation of the battle.

Data used in the model include high-resolution digital elevations, woodlot heights, building heights, and visitor interpretive information provided by Don Montgomery, Park Interpreter. After viewsheds were computed for each location, the data layers were combined to produce a map. The third model, Visual Integrity, compares the present land use of the battlefield to land use at the time of the battle, December 7, 1862. Color aerial photography, along with existing digital data, provided the team with enough information to produce a current, high-resolution (first-level classification) land use/ land cover map of the battlefield. Representations of the area provided by the State Park Service and archival research were used to determine 1862 conditions. For the map, land use categories were reclassified as to their integrity loss or retention compared to the 1862 era. The results produced by these three models will answer the initial questions posed by the National Park Service and assist their decision-making process concerning the future of the battlefield(s) in question. The project was conducted by team leader Brian Culpepper and Malcolm Williamson, with Jim Farley, CAST Technical Director, serving as project supervisor.

A by-product of this project was the creation of a new command module in GRASS (Geographical Resources Analysis Support System) software. CAST staff Chiou-Guey Liaw and Malcolm Williamson were able to alter the GRASS command r.los (line-of-sight) in order to compute the degree at which a location is not visible in areas classified as "not visible from the viewing location." This information would be valuable to park officials concerned with protective visual easements adjacent to the battlefield park by determining, for example, where single- or two-story buildings could be built and still not affect the important viewsheds. 

Adapted from: Prairie Grove Battlefield Intensive Study, an article by R. Brian Culpepper, NCRI Newsletter Vol. 3, Spring 1994