Multiscale socio-ecological networks in the age of information

Abstract

Interactions between people and ecological systems, through leisure or tourism activities, form a complex socio-ecological spatial network. The analysis of the benefits people derive from their interactions with nature—also referred to as cultural ecosystem services (CES)—enables a better understanding of these socio-ecological systems. In the age of information, the increasing availability of large social media databases enables a better understanding of complex socio-ecological interactions at an unprecedented spatio-temporal resolution. Within this context, we model and analyze these interactions based on information extracted from geotagged photographs embedded into a multiscale socio-ecological network. We apply this approach to 16 case study sites in Europe using a social media database (Flickr) containing more than 150,000 validated and classified photographs. After evaluating the representativeness of the network, we investigate the impact of visitors’ origin on the distribution of socio-ecological interactions at different scales. First at a global scale, we develop a spatial measure of attractiveness and use this to identify four groups of sites. Then, at a local scale, we explore how the distance traveled by the users to reach a site affects the way they interact with this site in space and time. The approach developed here, integrating social media data into a network-based framework, offers a new way of visualizing and modeling interactions between humans and landscapes. Results provide valuable insights for understanding relationships between social demands for CES and the places of their realization, thus allowing for the development of more efficient conservation and planning strategies.

A transnational perspective of global and regional ecosystem service flows from and to mountain regions

“…Here we exemplified the flow of tourists to locations that primarily offer outdoor activities, while surrounding cities such as Bern, Zurich, Munich and Milan host even more international tourists who may also visit nearby mountain locations. Nevertheless, our results demonstrate high levels of global interactions, as people from all over the world benefit from the recreational services offered by mountain regions, confirming the complex spatial socio-ecological relationships of cultural services 31 . The actual use of outdoor recreation is thus influenced both by natural assets and proximity to benefiting areas in the case of green urban areas 30 .…”

Digital co-construction of relational values: understanding the role of social media for sustainability

“…In an attempt to overcome these limitations, revealed values are increasingly derived from more widely representative social media (Hamstead et al 2018;Ilieva and McPhearson 2018;Langemeyer et al 2018;Lenormand et al 2018). Already leveraged to empirically test social science theories (De Nadai et al 2016), social media represents a digital arena where members of virtual communities share and exchange multimedia content.…”

MultiVERSE: a multiplex and multiplex-heterogeneous network embedding approach

“…In social science, multiplex networks are gaining interest to understand human behaviour 101 . Multiplex-heterogeneous network embedding could give insights on epidemic spread 102 , 103 , socio-economic systems 104 or socio-ecological systems 105 .…”