Διαδικτυακή Πύλη Συνεργασίας Για Τα Δάση

This report provides an overview of the key patterns that emerged from the spatial analyses of the destination and route data collected during the 2013 Sustainable Roads workshops on the Mount Baker Snoqualmie (MBS) National Forest. We excluded the pilot workshop data from the analyses because a somewhat different process was used to collect the mapped data. The data used in the analysis was collected from 262 participants in eight workshops (Bellingham, Sedro-Woolley, Darrington, Monroe, Everett, Seattle, Issaquah, Enumclaw). During the workshops, participants mapped up to eight destinations of importance to them, and in most cases, also mapped the routes they took to each destination. For each destination and its associated route, participants also provided the following information:  Name of the place, why the destination is especially important, what activities or work the participant does there, how often the participant visits the place in a typical year, what type of transportation the participant uses to get there.

Social media data is increasingly used as a proxy for human activity in different environments, including protected areas, where collecting visitor information is often laborious and expensive, but important for management and marketing. Here, we compared data from Instagram, Twitter and Flickr, and assessed systematically how park popularity and temporal visitor counts derived from social media data perform against high-precision visitor statistics in 56 national parks in Finland and South Africa in 2014. We show that social media activity is highly associated with park popularity, and social mediabased monthly visitation patterns match relatively well with the official visitor counts. However, there were considerable differences between platforms as Instagram clearly outperformed Twitter and Flickr. Furthermore, we show that social media data tend to perform better in more visited parks, and should always be used with caution. Based on stakeholder discussions we identified potential reasons why social media data and visitor statistics might not match: the geography and profile of the park, the visitor profile, and sudden events. Overall the results are encouraging in broader terms: Over 60% of the national parks globally have Twitter or Instagram activity, which could potentially inform global nature conservation.

The demand for enjoyable recreational environments is growing. At the same time, the increase of urban areas and intensively managed agricultural areas are deemed major threats to ecosystem services provision. Therefore, protected areas are becoming increasingly important for providing recreational ecosystem services. In this study, we analysed visitors’ profiles from on-site surveys at 10 Natura 2000 sites in different Italian regions. We gathered information on recreational activities, behaviour, expenditure, satisfaction of the visitors, and knowledge of Natura 2000. Predominant recreational activities were hiking, cycling, and wine and food tasting. Mean daily expenditure per visitor amounted to 48.56 €. The level of satisfaction with site-specific facilities and features was generally high, whereas knowledge about the Natura 2000 network was scarce. In the light of the visitors’ behaviour, we identified three main types of visitors: the regional excursionist, the local recreationist, and the sportive tourist. The presented findings provide useful insights for Natura 2000 site management and related recreational ecosystem services as well as for guiding visitor management. Management implications Our survey reveals several aspects related to recreational visits of protected areas, which are important for managing ecosystems and visitors: • The revealed main recreational activities can help to improve the recreational opportunities or visitor management. • Estimation of visitor expenditure indicates economic benefits at the local level. • Visitor types describe visitor behaviour and can guide the promotion of the sites. • Suggestions of the respondents for improving the recreational quality of the sites include more initiatives, guided tours and information, as well as the improvement of the roads and the signage system.

Childhood-nature experiences have lifelong effects on environmental citizenship and commitment to nature-based activities. But, it is unclear whether, and to what extent, the different mechanisms through which children and youth experience nature are associated with these outcomes. To test these associations, an online questionnaire assessing mechanisms of childhood exposure to nature, adulthood environmental citizenship and commitment to nature- based activities, and demographic variables was sent to the email addresses of 509 employees of the United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Northern Research Station. The 236 completed surveys indicated four mechanisms of children's exposure to nature. Children's self-exposure to nature was the strongest predictor of a number of aspects of adulthood environmental citizenship and of behavioral and attitudinal commitments to nature-based activities. Exposure through schoolrelated programs had less predictive value for these outcomes. Implications for pathways to enhance the benefits of childhood-nature experiences are discussed.