A recent paper discusses how the number of per capita visits (NPV) to US national parks has trended lower for the past 16 years, and speculates that it has something to do with electronic reality supplanting experience au naturel. Go on home baby, watch it on TV.

After 50 years of steady increase, per capita visits to US national parks have declined since 1988. This decline, coincident with the rise in electronic entertainment media, may represent a shift in recreation choices with broader implications for the value placed on biodiversity conservation and environmentally responsible behavior.

We compared the decline in per capita visits with a set of indicators representing alternate recreation choices and constraints. The Spearman correlation analyses found this decline in NPV to be significantly negatively correlated with several electronic entertainment indicators: hours of television, video games, home movies, theatre attendance and internet use.

There were also significant negative correlations with oil prices, foreign travel, and Appalachian Trail hikers. Income was significantly positively correlated with foreign travel but negatively correlated with national park visits. There was no significant correlation of mean number of vacation days, indicating available vacation time is probably not a factor. Federal funding actually increased during this period, and so was rejected as a probable factor. Park capacity was rejected as limiting since both total overnight stays and visits at the seven most popular parks rose well into the mid-1990s. Aging of baby boomers was also rejected as they are only now reaching retirement age, and thus during the period of visitation decline were still of prime family vacation age.

Multiple linear regression of four of the entertainment media variables as well as oil prices explains 97.5% of this recent decline. We may be seeing evidence of a fundamental shift away from people’s appreciation of nature (biophilia, Wilson 1984) to ‘videophilia,’ which we here define as “the new human tendency to focus on sedentary activities involving electronic media.” Such a shift would not bode well for the future of biodiversity conservation.

I think it's nature shows that have turned people off to actual nature. Nature is itchy, or worse, and so relentless. You seldom get as good a view in an actual visit to some notable location as you get on TV. It's like the advertisment for a burger: It's always prettier than a real burger. TV is better than reality when your values are the pursuit of fine audio-visual experiences in comfort. Nature isn't comfortable. And it often smells funny. And, like Norm says, "the crickets make him nervous".

Another bit of research finds that TV is an effective 'painkiller' for kids

Pain is stressful for children, even when relatively minor procedures are involved, say the authors, who conclude that the passive distraction of TV is a more effective analgesic than active distraction. Watching TV also seems to increase children's pain tolerance . . .

Increasingly, the meaning of the words "nature" and "natural" is arbitrary, fashionable nonsense. It isn't only that people have ever fewer experiences in environments that aren't obviously constructed, or worse, simulated. It is also that we have long been wrong about the extent of human alteration of "nature". While Brad Allenby meditates on the implications of the anthropocene era it becomes ever clearer that our archeology and anthropology have been naive at best, and that the anthropocene began eons ago.

This isn't just an interesting bit of trivia because many pseudo-environmental arguments advocating some political agenda or another are arguments from authority, the authority of nature. But when we look closely they are only reactionary arguments pining for some arbitrarily selected earlier era that has been photoshopped in their minds to remove the awkward and ugly bits - just like on TV.

Some of that was an issue in the post All Wet, where the actions of humans affecting watersheds created or destroyed ecosystems over century scale time periods. The definition of "natural" varied depending on what century you chose as the baseline. Consider this article that echoes some of the points of that post. [via Resilience Science -> No Se Nada]

In the face of uncontrolled change, senior water-rights holders and instream flow advocates are joining forces to stave off well-financed developers near the final stages of their projects. Their gut-level reactions are inherently incapable of implementing viable alternatives based on hydrologic reality. They’re too little, too late.

Testifying recently before the Montana House Natural Resources Committee, I was shocked by the uninformed questions asked by committee members. Lacking the most basic understanding of cause-and-effect relationships in hydrology, how can lawmakers be expected to create a sound legal framework for managing water resources?

Conversion from irrigated agriculture to residential and commercial development is altering the seasonal flow patterns to which we have grown accustomed. Although the timing and scale of change varies from place to place, the general pattern is predictable. The challenge for legislators and land-use planners is to understand these patterns and to make conscious, informed decisions about whether to accommodate or mitigate them.

The change from irrigated agriculture to residential development entails more than simply pumping groundwater. Most irrigation systems in the West — especially the oldest systems on the most productive ground — use diverted surface water. Irrigation water that crops do not use seeps into the soil and eventually reaches the water table, where it recharges groundwater in the underlying aquifer. So-called irrigation return flow is a major source of groundwater recharge in irrigated western valleys.

The irrigation-charged groundwater slowly makes its way underground to rivers, streams and springs, where it eventually discharges. Groundwater discharge from irrigation return flow keeps rivers flowing well into late summer and fall, even after all the snow has long since melted, even after the rains have stopped. Although not a natural phenomenon, we consider this annual flow pattern “normal,” for it has recurred for more than 30 years. . .

Previously, irrigation diversions depleted streamflow in the spring and early summer, and irrigation return flow maintained streamflow well into the late summer and fall. Now, with fewer surface-water diversions, early flows increase, as does the risk of flooding. Conversely, late-season flows decrease, potentially leaving fish and downstream irrigators high and dry.

In the comments to the post at No Se Nada an interesting point is made by Brian S.

Similar issue in south San Francisco Bay - many of the streams either never made it through the fluvial deposits to the Bay, or were far more seasonal. Some cool historical maps have come out recently about this. Returning to "natural" isn't really an option here, and probably isn't desirable.

Can a historical map tell us what is "natural"? Not at all. By the time the map was made the anthropocene had already been in swing for a long time. What was the area like before the 17th century fur trappers had scoured the region for beaver pelts? Had their industrious creation of dams on every available tributary impeded the flow of winter and spring water enough to accomplish something similar to human irrigation? Were floods reduced in spring and instream flows increased later in the year? It seems that this would be so, but we have little information.

Arguments from authority based on some view of nature have no value. We'll have to make our choices and policies without authority. There is no right answer, no natural answer, there are only choices. As Eloise Kendy puts it in the article referenced above, we aren't preserving natural systems, we are preserving "normal" systems, things that have recurred for long enough for us to consider them "natural". It isn't that our choices don't need grounding in physical reality, it is that we have to derive them from first principles rather than appealing to a prior state. Current state matters too of course, "normal" is normal, people depend on some continuity, but arguments for change need to be sharper and better grounded than appeals to authorities that never existed except in false narratives.