Identifying and Mapping Groups of Protected Area Visitors by Environmental Awareness

Abstract

Protected areas worldwide receive billions of visitors annually. The positive impact of nature on health and wellbeing, in addition to providing opportunities for cultural activities such as recreation and aesthetic appreciation, is well documented. Management to reduce negative impacts to biodiversity and conservation aims whilst providing amenities and access to visitors is important. Understanding environmental awareness of visitors and their on-site spatial patterns can assist in making effective management decisions within often constrained resources. However, there is a lack of strategies for site-specific identification and predictive mapping of visitors by environmental awareness. Here, we demonstrate a method to map on-site visitation by latent groups of visitors based on their environmental awareness of on-site issues. On-site surveys and participatory mapping were used to collect data on environmental awareness on bird nesting and spatial visitation patterns in an upland moor in northern England. Latent class analysis (LCA), a structural equation model, was used to discover underlying groups of environmental awareness, with random forest (RF) modelling, a machine learning technique, using a range of on-site predictors (bioclimatic, land cover, elevation, viewshed, and proximity to paths and freshwater) to predict and map visitation across the site by each group. Visitors were segmented into ‘aware’ and ‘ambiguous’ groups and their potential spatial visitation patterns mapped. Our results demonstrate the ability to uncover groups of users by environmental awareness and map their potential visitation across a site using a variety of on-site predictors. Spatial understanding of the movement patterns of differently environmentally aware groups of visitors can assist in efficient targeting of conservation education endeavours (i.e., signage, positioning of staff, monitoring programmes, etc.), therefore maximising their efficacy. Furthermore, we anticipate this method will be of importance to environmental managers and educators when deploying limited resources.

Spatial distribution of biodiversity citizen science in a natural area depends on area accessibility and differs from other recreational area use

“…In addition to informing more effective analysis of existing citizen science data, knowledge of citizen science activity patterns can be used by area managers to promote and guide future data collection. First, managers could use knowledge about citizen science trends to reach out to current participants to prompt collection of data to meet specific monitoring needs, for example by posting signs in areas regularly frequented by citizen science participants or communicating through customization features offered by citizen science platforms (Callaghan et al., 2021; Gosal et al., 2021; Koen & Newton, 2021). Second, managers could identify areas of low citizen science activity to target for recruiting new participants (Weaver & Lawton, 2017).…”

“…interpretive signage, the use of customized settings on citizen science platforms and promotional events such as bioblitzes) can effectively guide mass participation citizen science data collection (Callaghan et al., 2019; Kays et al., 2020; Knape et al., 2022; Koen & Newton, 2021; Salmon et al., 2021). For these reasons, researchers and managers of protected areas have called for greater research into trends in citizen science participation within protected areas (Binley et al., 2021; Gosal et al., 2021; Leung et al., 2018; Weaver & Lawton, 2017).…”

Fine-scale spatial distribution of biodiversity citizen science in a natural area depends on area accessibility and differs from other recreational area use

“…In addition to informing more effective analysis of existing citizen science data, knowledge of citizen science activity patterns can be used by area managers to promote and guide future data collection. First, managers could use knowledge about citizen science trends to reach out to current participants to prompt collection of data to meet specific monitoring needs, for example by posting signs in areas regularly frequented by citizen science participants or communicating through customization features offered by citizen science platforms (Callaghan et al 2021, Koen and Newton 2021, Gosal et al 2021. Second, managers could identify areas of low citizen science activity to target for recruiting new participants (Weaver and Lawton 2017).…”

“…Such direction (e.g., interpretive signage, the use of customized settings on citizen science platforms, and promotional events such as bioblitzes) can effectively guide mass participation citizen science data collection (Callaghan et al 2019, Knape et al 2021, Koen and Newton 2021, Kays et al 2020, Salmon et al 2021. For these reasons, researchers and managers of protected areas have called for greater research into trends in citizen science participation within protected areas (Weaver and Lawton 2017, Leung et al 2018, Binley et al 2021, Gosal et al 2021.…”

Conciencia Ambiental en La Conservación De Parques Y Jardines

“…Chimu & Nadége (2018) nos hace referencia sobre la eficacia y los resultados positivos sobre el uso de talleres en niños desde 5 años de edad, llegando a la conclusión que dichos talleres son eficaces logrando el desarrollo de la conciencia ambiental en los estudiantes de 5 años. Sin embargo, según las revisiones de varios estudios que existen una falta de estrategias para la adecuada identificación que sean específicas de los distintos sitios y mapeos predictivos de visitantes o turistas mediante la conciencia ambiental (Gosal et al, 2021).…”