UC Merced

Movement throughout the greater Yosemite National Park region is regularly disturbed by climate change-exacerbated events, from rockslides to wildfires. Regional transportation corridors navigate static and dynamic thresholds influenced by politico-legal, social, ecological, and economic factors across multiple spatial and temporal scales. This dissertation addresses three components influencing connectivity in this region, whose economic viability heavily depends on access to and from the park through just four main corridors. Madeline's mixed-methods research identifies factors leading to reduced resilience within regional transportation policy, including loss of valuable local knowledge when agencies outsource plan development. Her research highlights how parks of varying sizes and popularity experience consistent visitation during poor air quality, causing adverse impacts and reduced resilience. Her recently published work on displacement reveals that visitors choose to displace to other gates rather than disperse into gateway communities when some, but not all, of Yosemite's gates close- thereby condensing increasing numbers of vehicles and visitors into constrained, high wildfire risk corridors. Visitors maintain certain habits reflected in spending in gateway communities- with routine expenditures remaining stable and dynamic spending increasing. These findings significantly affect park management, gateway communit