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Using crowd-sourced photos to assess seasonal patterns of visitor use in mountain-protected areas

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Abstract

Managing protected areas effectively requires information about patterns of visitor use, but these data are often limited. We explore how geotagged photos on Flickr, a popular photo-sharing social-media site, can generate hotspot maps and distribution models of temporal and spatial patterns of use in two mountain-protected areas of high conservation value. In Aconcagua Provincial Park (Argentina), two routes to the summit of Aconcagua were used in summer, but most visitors stayed close to the main road, using formal and informal walking trails and the Visitor Centre, while in winter, there was very limited visitation. In Kosciuszko National Park (Australia), alpine walking trails were popular in summer, but in winter, most visitors stayed in the lower altitude ski resorts and ski trails. Results demonstrate the usefulness of social-media data alone as well as a complement for visitor monitoring, providing spatial and temporal information for site-specific and park-level management of visitors and potential impacts in conservation areas.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Ruben Massarelli from Aconcagua Provincial Park who provided us with visitor statistics for the park and Dirección de Recursos Naturales Renovables, Mendoza, for providing the GIS layers for Aconcagua. We also thank Tim Greenville, Pamela O’Brien, and Anthony Evans for providing traffic counter location data and information regarding visitor use patterns in Kosciuszko National Park. Thank you also to Will Dorrington for providing GIS layers for Kosciuszko National Park, and Christopher Darlington for providing data on visitor use of the alpine area in the park.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Natural Resources, North Carolina State University, CB 7106, Raleigh, NC, 27695, USA

    Chelsey Walden-Schreiner

  2. Desertification and Land Management Laboratory (LaDyOT), CONICET, Mendoza, Argentina

    Sebastian Dario Rossi

  3. Instituto, Argentino de Nivología y Glaciología y Ciencias Ambientales (IANIGLA), Centro Científico Tecnológico (CCT) CONICET, Mendoza, Argentina

    Agustina Barros

  4. Griffith School of Environment, Gold Coast Campus, Parklands Drive, Southport, QLD, 4222, Australia

    Catherine Pickering

  5. Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management, North Carolina State University, CB 7106, Raleigh, NC, 27695, USA

    Yu-Fai Leung

  6. Center for Geospatial Analytics, North Carolina State University, CB 7106, Raleigh, NC, 27695, USA

    Yu-Fai Leung

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  1. Chelsey Walden-Schreiner
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  2. Sebastian Dario Rossi
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  3. Agustina Barros
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Correspondence to Chelsey Walden-Schreiner.

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Walden-Schreiner, C., Rossi, S.D., Barros, A. et al. Using crowd-sourced photos to assess seasonal patterns of visitor use in mountain-protected areas. Ambio 47, 781–793 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-018-1020-4

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