Many parks have no gate where everyone entering is counted, so how many people really visited is hard to know. Visitors do post pictures from there. from dozens of parks were set against posts on social networks. How well does it work?
Well enough to rank, not to count. Official visit data from 56 parks were compared with people posting from them on social networks in 2014. The number of posts reflected reasonably well which parks are popular and what their are, how they change from month to month. Instagram fitted the visit data better than Flickr and Twitter. But .
In protected areas counting visitors is sometimes hard. There is not always a single gate, and installing sensors on every trail is expensive.
The researchers tested whether posts from a park’s location give a clue to the load. They compared three platforms and parks in Finland and in South Africa.
The relationship was better in busy parks and on Instagram. Activity on the network also tracked the monthly seasonality relatively well, though not always.
The tool does not replace counting on the ground. Whoever posts is not , and differences in posting habits, in geography and in sudden events can all distort the picture.
wat. Across 56 national parks, Instagram posts reflected visits better than posts on Twitter or Flickr.
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Public posts can add a tool for managing reserves where ordinary counting is difficult or expensive.
How do we know?
The work compared Instagram, Flickr and Twitter data with accurate visit records from 56 national parks in two countries.
What is still unknown
The networks and how people use them have changed since 2014. Whoever posts is not necessarily a representative sample, and an unusual event can create many posts without many visitors.
Learn something?
Where to next
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How do you read a sealed letter without opening it?conservation
What happens to a small forest the community around it holds sacred?conservation