Representatives from Clemson University’s Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management (PRTM), CU Libraries, and Clemson Computing & Information Technology (CCIT) have worked to create a prototype in partnership with the Southeast Region of the National Parks Service and the World Bank’s Global Tiger Initiative.

The Open Parks Network has been designed to provide busy park professionals “one-stop shopping” for park related research and data management platforms in order to better disseminate the vast amount of knowledge existing in the broad field of park and protected area management. 

Brett Wright is Professor and Chairman, Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management at Clemson University.  Dr. Wright has published extensively on the human dimensions of natural resources management in national and international journals and has conducted social science research for the National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, state fish and wildlife agencies, and local park and recreation organizations.  He is former President of the National Society for Park Resources, a Fellow in the American Academy of Park and Recreation Administrators and a William Penn Mott Award recipient.  He has been one of the leaders of the Open Parks Network project, a cyberinfrastructure initiative to bring high-end computing to bear on park and natural resource management issues.

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