Department of Environment and Society, Utah State University, Logan, UT, USA.
Institute of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism, Utah State University, Logan, UT, USA.
Sci Rep. 2021 Jan 28;11(1):2403. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-82145-z.
Daily weather affects total visitation to parks and protected areas, as well as visitors' experiences. However, it is unknown if and how visitors change their spatial behavior within a park due to daily weather conditions. We investigated the impact of daily maximum temperature and precipitation on summer visitation patterns within 110 U.S. National Park Service units. We connected 489,061 geotagged Flickr photos to daily weather, as well as visitors' elevation and distance to amenities (i.e., roads, waterbodies, parking areas, and buildings). We compared visitor behavior on cold, average, and hot days, and on days with precipitation compared to days without precipitation, across fourteen ecoregions within the continental U.S. Our results suggest daily weather impacts where visitors go within parks, and the effect of weather differs substantially by ecoregion. In most ecoregions, visitors stayed closer to infrastructure on rainy days. Temperature also affects visitors' spatial behavior within parks, but there was not a consistent trend across ecoregions. Importantly, parks in some ecoregions contain more microclimates than others, which may allow visitors to adapt to unfavorable conditions. These findings suggest visitors' spatial behavior in parks may change in the future due to the increasing frequency of hot summer days.
日常天气会影响游客对公园和保护区的总访问量，以及游客的体验。然而，目前尚不清楚游客是否会因每日天气条件而改变其在公园内的空间行为，以及会如何改变。我们调查了每日最高温度和降水对美国 110 个国家公园管理局单位内夏季游客模式的影响。我们将 489,061 张带有地理标记的 Flickr 照片与每日天气、游客的海拔和与设施（如道路、水体、停车场和建筑物）的距离联系起来。我们比较了在寒冷、平均和炎热天气下以及有降水和无降水天气下，美国大陆 14 个生态区的游客行为。我们的研究结果表明，日常天气会影响游客在公园内的活动地点，而且天气的影响在不同生态区之间有很大差异。在大多数生态区，游客在雨天会更靠近基础设施。温度也会影响游客在公园内的空间行为，但在不同生态区之间没有一致的趋势。重要的是，一些生态区的公园比其他公园包含更多的小气候，这可能使游客能够适应不利条件。这些发现表明，由于炎热夏季天数的增加，未来游客在公园内的空间行为可能会发生变化。
