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III. DEFINING THE NATURAL AREAS 



To a slum-dweller a natural area could be a quarter-acre 

 park; to an accomplished hiker, the term might not be served by 

 anything less than a 1,000 square-mile primeval wilderness. As 

 varied as the definitions of 'natural area' are the uses to which 

 humans put such areas. For the purposes of this survey, a rather 

 stringent definition was assumed, for the task was to identify 

 natural areas with demonstrable, intrinsic ecological value. 



Under such stringent definition, as we were well aware, many 

 valuable features of the landscape are omitted from consideration. 

 No definition of an ecosystem can escape the fact that an ecosystem 

 is not a self-contained unit with definable limits. Plant life, 

 for example, depends on a host of features — geological, climatic 

 and so forth. And geologists may well find their most valued 

 areas given short shrift in this survey. Archeologists and 

 historians, as well as recreation planners, certainly will. 



The definition of a natural area to be judged in this survey 

 is: an area of land or water where natural ecosystem processes 

 operate relatively undisturbed and where natural biological 

 communities, their interactions, structures and functions can be 

 studied. This is somewhat more restrictive a definition than that 

 used by the "Catalog of Natural Areas in Maryland" published by 

 that state's planning department. It is more precise, though not 

 necessarily more to the point, than another definition of natural 

 areas: "That which is His, not ours." 



