Abstract
Landscapes are increasingly recognized for providing valuable cultural ecosystem services with numerous non-material benefits by serving as places of rest, relaxation, and inspiration that ultimately improve overall mental health and physical well-being. Maintaining and enhancing these valuable benefits through targeted management and conservation measures requires understanding the spatial and temporal determinants of perceived landscape values. Content contributed through mobile technologies and the web are emerging globally, providing a promising data source for localizing and assessing these landscape benefits. These georeferenced data offer rich in situ qualitative information through photos and comments that capture valued and special locations across large geographic areas. We present a novel method for mapping and modeling landscape values and perceptions that leverages viewshed analysis of georeferenced social media data. Using a high resolution LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) derived digital surface model, we are able to evaluate landscape characteristics associated with the visual-sensory qualities of outdoor recreationalists. Our results show the importance of historical monuments and attractions in addition to specific environmental features which are appreciated by the public. Evaluation of photo-image content highlights the opportunity of including temporally and spatially variable visual-sensory qualities in cultural ecosystem services (CES) evaluation like the sights, sounds and smells of wildlife and weather phenomena.
Highlights
Landscapes are increasingly recognized for their provision of valuable cultural ecosystem services (CES) as they support recreation and leisure activities linked to educational, inspirational, and spiritual values, and improved overall mental and physical health and wellbeing (Sandifer et al, 2015; van Zanten et al, 2016a)
Assessing landscape-scale variation in a wide range of values would improve our understanding of the diversity of specific locations that are appreciated for their CES
We aim to evaluate the experienced environments of visitors to coastal North Carolina through the locations they volunteer via social media
Summary
Landscapes are increasingly recognized for their provision of valuable cultural ecosystem services (CES) as they support recreation and leisure activities linked to educational, inspirational, and spiritual values, and improved overall mental and physical health and wellbeing (Sandifer et al, 2015; van Zanten et al, 2016a). Significant advances have been made evaluating CES using respondents’ assessment of landscape photographs (Van and Verburg, 2014; van Zanten et al, 2016b), immersive virtual environments (Appleton and Lovett, 2003; Smith, 2015; Tabrizian et al, 2018), and participatory techniques (Brown and Fagerholm, 2015). Do such surveys capture the diversity of appreciated landscapes as they are confined to specific locations and small samples of the population (van Zanten et al, 2016a; Sherrouse et al, 2011).
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