2018 / Public land, Recreation, Social media

Recreational Use in Dispersed Public Lands Measured Using Social Media Data and On-Site Counts

Citation

Fisher, D. M., Wood, S. A., White, E. M., Blahna, D. J., Lange, S., Weinberg, A., … Lia, E. (2018). Recreational use in dispersed public lands measured using social media data and on-site counts. Journal of Environmental Management, 222, 465-474. doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2018.05.045

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A person takes a selfie in a forest filled with fall-colored leavesPublic lands provide a lot of value, including clean water, wildlife habitat, and places to hike, camp, and explore. But land managers often have a hard time figuring out exactly how many people are using those spaces, especially in large, remote areas without entrance gates or ticket booths.

This study explored a creative solution: using social media to track where people are recreating. Researchers looked at geotagged photos shared on Flickr and trip reports posted on a hiking forum, and compared that data to more traditional counting methods like infrared sensors, timelapse cameras, and manual headcounts.

They ran the experiment in two ways. First, they focused on 15 trailheads inside the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest in western Washington, comparing daily and monthly visitor counts from on-site sensors to counts based on how many photos and trip reports came from those same spots. Second, they zoomed out to look at national forests across the entire United States, comparing annual estimates from geotagged images to official numbers from the U.S. Forest Service.

At both scales — individual trails and entire forests — the results were striking. Social media data lined up closely with traditional counts. For national forests in every region of the country, the correlation between official visitation stats and geotagged image counts ranged from 55% to 95%. For individual trails, monthly visitor counts from on-site measurements matched up with geotagged images (79% correlation) and trip reports (91% correlation).

The takeaway? Social media data won’t replace on-the-ground counting entirely, but it offers a cheap, fast, and easy way to monitor recreational use across seasons and in places that have never been tracked before. For land managers trying to understand how people use public lands — and how to manage them better — that’s a powerful tool.

Abstract

Figure 1. MBSNF (boundary in gray) in western WA. Left: The 15 trail areas observed in this study are dispersed across 4 ranger districts (MTB: Mt. Baker, DAR: Darrington, SKY: Skykomish, SNO: Snoqualmie). Right: Geotagged Flickr photos (purple points) taken in and around the MBSNF. Sources: USFS and Flickr. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)

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.

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