Landscape Report Types

Photographs of several different landscape reports arranged in a fan shape. — The NPS has relied on landscape reports for decades. As this collage suggests, reports can come in many forms.

Documenting Cultural Landscapes for Preservation

Documents tailored to cultural landscapes are an important part of directing how National Park Service professionals work to preserve cultural landscapes. This documentation describes the history of a landscape and note the space’s preservation status. Cultural landscape documentation also inventories what specific landscape elements contribute to the space’s sense of history and outlines what actions must take place to preserve this historic character.

The NPS manages over 1000 cultural landscapes, which display amazing diversity in size, age, and location. Because of this, no cultural landscape report, inventory, or maintenance plan is quite the same. The wide-ranging nature of these landscapes requires the same from reports that help us understand them. Cultural landscape documentation can be highly interdisciplinary, requiring collaboration between specialists in fields including historical landscape architecture, history, anthropology, and horticulture.

This article covers the types of documents that most commonly impact how the NPS understands and preserves cultural landscapes.

Cultural Landscape Inventories

Cultural Landscape Inventory reports (CLIs) are baseline documentation for cultural landscapes. These inventories reflect what makes a cultural landscape historically significant and what features link it to the past. All CLIs describe a landscape’s size and location, explain its historical significance, and note its distinctive characteristics and features. A specific CLI will also track the condition (good, fair, or poor) of a cultural landscape and identify what factors impact this condition. Most CLIs are available to the public through the NPS information management system, the Integrated Resource Management Applications (IRMA) portal.

CLIs contain useful information for managing, maintaining, and interpreting cultural landscapes. Each one includes an evaluation of existing conditions, and a chronology of the physical history of the landscape. CLIs provide a comprehensive list of features that contribute to the significance of a cultural landscape. The CLI is updated periodically to incorporate any changes to the landscape, including changes in condition.

Cultural Landscapes Inventory

Full CLI List and CLI Reports

Cultural Landscape Reports

Cultural Landscape Reports (CLRs) are documents that help guide the future management of cultural landscapes. CLRs evaluate the history and integrity of a landscape, including how its geographical context, features, materials, and use have changed over time. Unlike CLIs, which document the existing features of a cultural landscape without providing treatment guidance, CLRs provide a future vision for the space’s treatment, use, and interpretation.

CLRs are divided into two parts. The first section details the site’s history, existing conditions, analysis, and evaluation. The second section covers treatment recommendations. These sections may be represented in the same document or within two separate documents.

CLRs are often prepared when park managers have goals for a cultural landscape that go beyond preservation maintenance. These goals can be driven by changing management goals or facility redevelopment that might affect how the landscape is used and may involve restoration or rehabilitation. For instance, if a park hoped to construct a new visitor’s center or parking area in a cultural landscape, a CLR would help protect the landscape’s character-defining features from undue alteration or loss and help shape the new design for optimal compatibility. Sometimes, a CLR will yield new information about a landscape’s historical significance, which can lead to reinterpretation of the space or updated National Register listings.

Cultural Landscape Reports

List of Recent Publications

Historic Structure Reports

Historic Structure Reports (HSRs) are park plans that document the history and present condition of historic structures. These reports inform preservation professionals and park staff on the proper maintenance, preservation, and use of specific historic structures.

Every HSR includes a management summary, a history of the relevant structure’s development, its treatment, and its treatment history. Every major historic structure that the NPS manages requires a separate HSR. Related collections of small and simple structures, or several structures that share many similar features, may be covered in a single HSR.

Although Historic Structure Reports focus primarily on structures rather than landscapes, they often share history and context with Cultural Landscape Reports and Cultural Landscape Inventories. Since historic structures often exist inside of and share history with cultural landscapes, HSR findings may impact how NPS professionals understand and manage cultural landscapes.

Historic Structure Reports

List of Recent Publications

Management Reports

The NPS produces many other documents that influence cultural landscape preservation and management. Management documents are produced situationally based on the needs of specific parks or landscapes. Examples of specific documents that inform cultural landscape preservation include:

General Management Plans
Orchard Management Plans
Preservation Maintenance Plans
Agricultural Management Guidelines
Turf Management Plans

From Plan to Practice

Whiskeytown National Recreation Area in California and Martin Van Buren National Historic Site in New York demonstrate how these specific management documents can impact cultural landscape preservation.

At Whiskeytown National Recreation Area, an Orchard Management Plan helped park staff to rehabilitate a historic apple orchard after it was damaged by a large wildfire. NPS staff and volunteers used cuttings from damaged historic trees to preserve the genetic material of the original trees.
At Martin Van Buren National Historic Site, interest in balancing historic representation with sustainability drove the park to create Agricultural Management Guidelines. The site’s history as an experimental farm where the abolitionist Van Buren sought to demonstrate that large-scale agriculture could function without enslaved labor, means that agricultural practice is an essential part of the cultural landscape. The Agricultural Management Guidelines recognize that the goals of historic preservation do not always integrate with agricultural processes, and prioritize stewarding the landscape while continuing Van Buren’s legacy of innovation in techniques such as water conservation, crop rotation, and crop selection.