Park Activities
Calendar of Events
Volunteer Programs
Sky Meadows Park
Location
Geography
Habitats
Trails
Visiting Park
Crooked Run Valley
Special Projects
About Us
In collaboration with the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation personnel at Sky Meadows State Park, the Sky Meadows State Park Nature Guide is maintained by Richard Clelland. Formerly
a teacher with the Fairfax County Public Schools (Fairfax, Virginia),
Mr. Clelland describes himself as a naturalist, educator, writer, photo-
grapher, and technical information specialist.
For the past thirty years Mr. Clelland has travelled to many of the
major parks, reserves, national forests, and wilderness regions of
the United States, Canada, and Costa Rica. Between hiking and
photographic excursions, he has talked with many government
officials and private operators about what information they provide visitors. As a former teacher, Mr. Clelland is particularly interested
in the "interface" between the general public and those who operate parks, reserves, national forests, and wilderness regions, and the scientists and students who conduct research in such regions. Of
special interest to Mr. Clelland are the databases and documentation developed pertaining to the plants and animals that inhabit protected natural environments, and how database information can be best structured, formatted, and disseminated to the general public.
The Sky Meadows State Park Nature Guide is an experiment in bring-
ing together information from a variety of different published and Internet databases. Some information (i.e., species surveys) was ob-
tained directly from researchers working in the Park; in particular, in-field research information previously collected and documented (i.e., birds and butterflies) at Sky Meadows has been incorporated into the Nature Guide. Extensive recent research (trees, shrubs, vines, forbs
/herbs) has also been included in the Nature Guide. In addition, much
of the natural history information for the Nature Guide has been derived from hundreds of different on-line database sources, including federal and state sources, as well as many universities and specialized interest groups.