School of Environment and Forest Sciences, University of Washington, Box 352100, Seattle, WA 98195, USA; Natural Capital Project, Woods Institute of the Environment, Stanford University, USA.
School of Environment and Forest Sciences, University of Washington, Box 352100, Seattle, WA 98195, USA; Natural Capital Project, Woods Institute of the Environment, Stanford University, USA.
J Environ Manage. 2018 Sep 15;222:465-474. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2018.05.045. Epub 2018 Jun 13.
Outdoor recreation is one of many important benefits provided by public lands. Data on recreational use are critical for informing management of recreation resources, however, managers often lack actionable information on visitor use for large protected areas that lack controlled access points. The purpose of this study is to explore the potential for social media data (e.g., geotagged images shared on Flickr and trip reports shared on a hiking forum) to provide land managers with useful measures of recreational use to dispersed areas, and to provide lessons learned from comparing several more traditional counting methods. First, we measure daily and monthly visitation rates to individual trails within the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest (MBSNF) in western Washington. At 15 trailheads, we compare counts of hikers from infrared sensors, timelapse cameras, and manual on-site counts, to counts based on the number of shared geotagged images and trip reports from those locations. Second, we measure visitation rates to each National Forest System (NFS) unit across the US and compare annual measurements derived from the number of geotagged images to estimates from the US Forest Service National Visitor Use Monitoring Program. At both the NFS unit and the individual-trail scales, we found strong correlations between traditional measures of recreational use and measures based on user-generated content shared on the internet. For national forests in every region of the country, correlations between official Forest Service statistics and geotagged images ranged between 55% and 95%. For individual trails within the MBSNF, monthly visitor counts from on-site measurements were strongly correlated with counts from geotagged images (79%) and trip reports (91%). The convenient, cost-efficient and timely nature of collecting and analyzing user-generated data could allow land managers to monitor use over different seasons of the year and at sites and scales never previously monitored, contributing to a more comprehensive understanding of recreational use patterns and values.
户外活动是公共土地提供的众多重要益处之一。关于娱乐使用的数据对于告知娱乐资源管理至关重要，然而，管理者通常缺乏对缺乏受控入口点的大型保护区游客使用的可操作信息。本研究的目的是探索社交媒体数据（例如，在 Flickr 上共享的地理标记图像和在徒步旅行论坛上共享的旅行报告）为管理人员提供对分散地区娱乐使用的有用度量的潜力，并提供从比较几种更传统的计数方法中吸取的经验教训。首先，我们测量了华盛顿西部贝克山-斯诺夸尔米国家森林（MBSNF）内各个步道的每日和每月客流量。在 15 个步道入口处，我们将徒步旅行者的红外传感器、延时摄像机和人工现场计数与基于这些地点共享的地理标记图像和旅行报告数量的计数进行了比较。其次，我们测量了美国每个国家森林系统（NFS）单位的访问量，并将基于地理标记图像数量得出的年度测量值与美国林务局国家访客使用监测计划的估计值进行了比较。在 NFS 单位和个别步道规模上，我们发现传统娱乐使用度量与基于用户生成内容共享的互联网度量之间存在很强的相关性。对于该国每个地区的国家森林，官方林务局统计数据和地理标记图像之间的相关性在 55%到 95%之间。在 MBSNF 内的个别步道中，现场测量的每月访客计数与地理标记图像（79%）和旅行报告（91%）的计数高度相关。收集和分析用户生成数据的便捷、高效和及时的性质可以使土地管理者能够监测一年中不同季节和以前从未监测过的地点和规模的使用情况，从而更全面地了解娱乐使用模式和价值。
