Recreation Opportunity Spectrum (ROS):
Scenery Management System (SMS)
Visual Management System (VMS)
Works Progress Administration (WPA)
DEFINITIONS
Adobe: A sun dried, unburned brick of clay and
straw. The clay of which the brick is made is
also referred to as “adobe” clay and used as
the mortar for cementing the blocks together.
Architectural character: The distinguishing
appearance of a building or structure’s
architectural features, such as roof slope,
materials, openings, massing, color, and scale.
The character is based on ecological and
cultural influences.
Architectural character type: Based on ecological
and cultural influences, the architectural
character definition for a distinctive and broad
geographic area. An architectural character
type with distinct and distinguishing features
is defined for each of eight provinces.
Arts and Crafts Movement: A building and
design period from approximately 1890 to 1929
that is best characterized by the Craftsman
style structure. The movement, which
essentially is a style of simplicity and lack of
fanciful ornamentation, included design of
structures, furniture, textiles, and pottery.
Popular architects of this period and design
included John Ruskin, Gustave Stickley,
Charles Limbert, and Frank Loyd Wright.
Balds: Southern Appalachian mountain balds are
meadow-like, essentially treeless openings of
grasses, sedges, forbs, and shrubs that occur
above 4,000 feet in elevation on mountain
gaps, ridges, and crests. When viewed from a
distance these areas appear “bald” as opposed
to the surrounding taller vegetation.
Bargeboards: The covering of the outside edge
of a gable roof that runs parallel with the
rafters.
Base: Bottom or lower part of a building; its
connection to the ground or land.
Battered: A wall that has been methodically
stepped back to form a slope from bottom
to top. Typically this treatment is used in
retaining walls to use the weight of the wall
to resist the horizontal forces.
Built environment: The part of the environment
formed by humans, including buildings,
structures, landscaping, earth forms,
roads, signs, trails, and utilities.
Canales: “Canal” and “Canales” are the Spanish
words for a drain or waterspout that takes
water from a roof and dispenses it off the
side of the building away from the wall.
Chickees: A traditional abode of Southwest
Florida’s Native Americans; “chickee” in the
Mikasuki language means “dwelling.” It is an
open air structure made from peeled pine or
cypress poles with palm fronds nailed to the
roof poles in an overlapping circular manner
for water tightness.
Civilian Conservation Corps: Formed in the Great
Depression, the Civilian Conservation Corps is
a national Government work program that
operated from 1933 to 1942 to employ
500,000 18- to 25-year-old men from lowincome
and nonworking families at jobs in
forests, parks, and rangelands. It was a joint
Government operation: the Army ran the
camps; the Departments of the Interior and
Agriculture were responsible for work projects
and personnel to manage them. The program
created many high-quality structures,
buildings, and campgrounds; most of which
still remain in use.
Cold roofs: A continuous, semi-flexible roof
membrane, consisting of plies of felts, mats,
or fabrics that are laminated on a roof with
alternate layers of cold-applied roof cement
and surfaced with a cold-applied coating.
Context: The larger sphere of influence that a
facility is considered within and affected by.
Three contexts for sustainability are ecological,
cultural, and economic.
Corbels: In Southwest style of post and beam
building, the corbel is the decorated support
capping the post and supporting the beam.
Its purpose is to dissipate the load of the
beam onto the post, as well as decoration.
Coursed cobblestone: Cobblestones are stones
chiseled to roughly rectangular shapes; they
are coursed when the bed joints are visible as
horizontal layers.
Dependencies: Numerous out buildings associated
with farming, such as barns, tool sheds, chicken
houses, smoke houses, and corn cribs.
Dogtrot house: Simple, long, narrow house of logs
with gable roof popular in the old South, some
with siding over the logs for better appearance
and large doors in the middle of the house on
each side to let the breeze blow though. A
porch and doors were typically on both sides
of the house. Name derived from the fact that
not only the breeze went through the middle,
but also the dogs.
Dripline: The point at which drainage water drops
from a structure of any form or material to
fall to the surface below. Examples: drip line of
a tree or drip line of a roof.
Eave soffit: A horizontal covering from the
underside of the roof edge to the house wall.
The soffit would typically cover the rafter ends.
Embodied energy: For buildings, it is the sum
total energy required for construction (that
is, procurement of materials, on site activity,
and, also, maintenance and refurbishment and
demolition). It can be compared to the capital
cost of the building only in terms of energy
measurement, not monetary terms. For
materials, it is the total energy measured in
units of energy to create for a unit of weight.
Expressed oversized structure: One typical
element was enlarged or exaggerated to
emphasize it as a major design feature
(for example, the front porch of a Craftsman
Bungalow style house with very large porch
piers).
Fall line: A point where the coastal plain rocks
have eroded back to the harder upland rocks
that form a barrier in a river. Typically this
fall line would create waterfalls for power
generation, as well as form the point where
boats would have to be unloaded to move their
cargo upriver. These points formed natural
features around which early towns formed in
the 19th century.
Family of signs: A series of signs with a
distinctive shape that serve as an informal
logo of the Forest Service. The signs have
different, but similar, shapes with different
sizes and have a protocol of use as delineated
in Engineering Management series publication:
EM-7100-15, Sign and Poster Guidelines For
The Forest Service. The signs of dark brown
and crème (off white) color are usually entrance
signs and readily identify a Forest Service
facility.
Fee demonstration: A temporary program
authorized by Congress in 1996 to allow
certain Government agencies to charge fees
for use of developed recreation sites and
parking. A condition of the program is that
the fees are to be used to maintain the
existing sites within the fee area. The program
was to last 2 years but has been extended
and could possibly be made permanent.
Forest Service region: For administrative
purposes, the Forest Service has divided the
States and territories into 10 administrative
units called regions. Each region has a regional
forester with staff to serve as administrator
for the forests in the region.
Forest Service shield: This is the official
logo/symbol of the Forest Service used to
denote official correspondence and property
owned or operated by the agency. It consists
of a badge-like shield, a single conifer tree
between the letters U and S, and the words
Forest Service above the tree and Dept. of
Agriculture on the lower side.
Gable: The triangular wall section at the ends of
a pitched roof bounded by the two roof slopes.
The gable is the vertical wall section.
Gable roof: Two pitched roofs back to back
forming a triangle on each end called a gable.
Granger-Thye permit: The Granger-Thye Act of
April 24, 1954, is a far-reaching statutory
authority allowing Forest Service funds and
property to be used in specific ways. This act is
the basis for the use of Government facilities
by private parties (rentals) and expenditures of
Government money on other than Government
lands and concessionaire programs. The permit
is the document outlining the conditions and
terms of the action.
Half-timbering: Exposed wood beams on the
exterior of the house in between stucco or
other materials. This was a feature of some
Craftsman homes. Because it is simpler and
less complex, it should not to be confused
with Tudor style houses.
Head frames: The steel or timber frame at the
top of a mining shaft, which carries the sheave
or pulley for the hoisting rope, and serves
various other purposes. Includes all the raised
structure around the shaft that is used for
loading and unloading cages.
Hip roofs: A gable roof with the ends brought
together at the same pitch as the rest of
the roof so all four sides of the roof are the
same angle.
INFRA: Acronym for “Infrastructure.” A Forest
Service corporate database and inventory of
the entire national forest and grasslands built
environment, including roads, buildings, trails,
structures, utilities, and all other improvements.
Landscape character: The distinguishing
appearance of a landscape’s visual and
ecological factors; landscape character is
defined in visual aspects of landform, climate,
geology, and surfacial rock; water features;
vegetation; color; and cultural pattern.
Landscape character types: A subdivision of
a province having overall characteristics of
the province but having a distinguishing
geographically specific landscape character.
For example, the Southern Rocky Mountain,
Northern Rocky Mountain, and Black Hills
landscape character types of the Rocky
Mountain Province.
Line officer: Forest Service administrative
decisionmaker, for example, the district ranger
or forest supervisor.
Lintel: The horizontal beam forming the upper
support member for a door or window frame
carrying the weight of the structure to the
side supports.
Mandan lodges: Earth covered post and beam
lodges of the North Dakota Mandan Tribe.
All around the perimeter of the lodge were
12 pillars that supported the rafters that
radiated down from the smoke hole at the
center and the 4 central posts. Across the
tops of these posts ran stringers, and slanting
down to the ground was an outer wall of
vertical-slanted logs. This formed a storage
space where firewood was kept and a coral for
favored horses, that might be brought in to
protect them from enemy raiding or dangerous
storms. The log walls and roof were covered
with willow poles, then brush, then heaped with
dirt. The lodges were arranged in circles around
a ceremonial plaza.
Massing: Expanse, spatial enclosure having form
or bulk; the resultant shape or form of buildings
or a building group.
Meaningful Measures: A Forest Service
recreation management system defining
measurable quality standards, costs, priorities,
targets, and results monitoring reporting.
National Recreation Strategy: Now known as
the National Recreation Agenda, the strategy
was the fourth element in the Forest Service’s
Natural Resource Agenda and the plan of
action to meet the expanding recreation use
and protect the health, diversity, and
productivity of the land. The strategy focuses
on five key goals: 1) improving the settings
for outdoor recreation and enhancing visitor
experiences, 2) guaranteeing visitor
satisfaction with services and facilities,
3) reaching out to rural and urban communities
to capitalize on the social and economic
opportunities associated with recreation on
the national forests, 4) strengthening our
relationships with those who cooperate to
improve outdoor recreation for all Americans,
and 5) ensuring that recreation use does
not impair the land’s health.
Naturalness: The level or degree of landscape of
modification and the predominance of nature
versus human alterations.
Partnerships: A term implying a formal or
informal level of cooperation to achieve a
certain goal desired by the interested partner
and Forest Service. A partnership is a
framework to recognize and involve interested
parties in cooperating with the Forest Service.
Province: A broad geographic area having similar
and distinguishing ecological and cultural
characteristics.
Rafter tails: Same as rafter ends; the end of
the rafters exposed at the edge of the eave.
ROS: Recreation Opportunity Spectrum, defining
six different recreation settings varying from
urban to primitive.
Recreation Opportunity Spectrum (ROS): A
recreation planning land classification system
that defines areas by the probable recreation
experience it provides in terms of setting and
level of development. The setting is measured
by the number of people expected, producing
different levels of solitude and the evidence of
human use as shown by management activities
and degree of development.
Rustic: A historic building style generally
employing local native materials and extensive
use of unrefined or natural formed wood
members and stone.
Scale: Two definitions: (1) in architecture, the
size of a building or structure in relation to
a human, varying from small intimate to
monumental, and (2) the geographic context
for relating to and identifying the built
environment—these scales are Nation,
province, and site; goals such as national
identity influence architectural character at
a site scale and vice versa.
Scenery Management System (SMS): Provides
an overall framework for the orderly inventory,
analysis, and management of scenery. Applies
to every acre of national forest and national
grasslands administered by the Forest Service
and to all Forest Service activities, including
timber harvesting, road building, stream
improvements, special use developments,
utility line construction, recreation
developments, and fuel breaks.
Shotgun house: Simple, long, narrow, one-story,
gable roof house with a narrow, covered front
porch in front. A door and back door are on
the other end with a small platform. Rooms
were as wide as the house and doors continued
through the rooms to the end. This was
typically a low-cost house for low-income
residents.
Structure: Description of the spatial relationship
of components parts of a building and their
connections. Also, a term for something built
having mass and shape (for example, bridge,
tower, or building).
Sustainability: An aspect of developments and
land uses that (1) minimizes the use of
resources, (2) conserves ecosystems, and
(3) creates healthy built environments and
landscapes for present and future generations.
Tabby: Early cement made from lime, sand, and
oyster shells and used mostly on the southern
Atlantic coast. Walls were made from this
material poured into forms; some walls were
then covered with stucco and also scored to
appear as blocks.
Townscape: A component of the landscape
comprised of a town or city, including a town
center, commercial area, and residential area.
Utilitarian building: Buildings tending to be of
few functions and not used by the public, for
example, warehouse, and well houses.
Universal Design: A term for a public philosophy
directing the design of products and
environments to be usable by all people, to
the greatest extent possible, without the
need for adaptation or specialized design.
The intent of universal design is to simplify
life for everyone by making products,
communications, and the built environment
more usable by as many people as possible
at little or no extra cost. Universal design
benefits people of all ages and abilities
(1997 North Carolina State University,
The Center for Universal Design).
Vigas: In the Southwestern United States, a
vigas is a tree log often stripped of its bark
and used in a room, or throughout a house,
for structural roof support or decoration.
Visual Management System (VMS): A guideline
process developed by the Forest Service in 1974
to retain a selected level of visual quality in the
seen landscape. The landscape is sorted into
different areas in terms of distance, relative
quantities of persons viewing the landscape
for recreation reasons, and quality of scenery.
This system was modified in 1996 and evolved
into the Scenery Management System.
Works Progress Administration (WPA): An
independent agency established by Congress
in 1935 to provide jobs during the Great
Depression. Although it primarily created
major public work construction jobs, it also
provided art, music, writing, and theater
projects. The need for the WPA ended in 1941;
the agency was officially eliminated in 1943.