Recreational use of protected areas: spatiotemporal insights from the Wikiloc mobile app

Abstract

Managing the rising number of visitors to protected areas (PAs) withoutcompromising their environmental goals is a critical challenge thatrequires a complete understanding of how and when visitors use thesespaces. Georeferenced data from fitness-tracking apps can providedetailed information about the visitor's spatiotemporal behaviour insidePAs, but its potential is still underexplored. This study uses georeferenceddata, from Wikiloc, to analyse the visitors' spatiotemporal behaviour inAlvão Natural Park, Portugal. Our findings show that: 52% of the visitors'use is concentrated around the Fisgas de Ermelo Waterfall; photos'hotspots coincide with the waterfalls and viewpoints facing them; 2% ofthe routes crossed a zone where recreational use is illegal; Spring (26%)and April (11%) receive the most visitors; 52% of routes are done on theweekends; 66% of visitors are inside the park during noon; start/endplaces are located near parking spaces; the most frequent times to start aroute are between 08:00-13:00 hrs, ending between 13-18:00 hrs. A newmethod was developed to calculate daily visitor numbers without photoconcentration bias. These results offer valuable insights that can aid inPAs' environmental and recreational use management by quicklyproviding detailed and low-cost visitor monitoring data.