Understanding how people use and experience important places for living nature is essential for effectively managing and monitoring human activities and conserving biodiversity.
Understanding how people use and experience important places for living nature is essential for effectively managing and monitoring human activities and conserving biodiversity.
In a new article published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, a team of researchers assessed global patterns of visitation rates, attractiveness and pressure to more than 12,000 Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas (IBAs), which are sites of international significance for nature conservation, by using geolocated data mined from social media (Twitter and Flickr).
The study found that Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas located in Europe and Asia, and in temperate biomes, had the highest density of social media users. Results also showed that sites of importance for congregatory species, which were also more accessible, more densely populated and provided more tourism facilities, received higher visitation than did sites richer in bird species.
Read more at University of Helsinki
Photo Credit: Anna Hausmann
