In a new article published in the journal
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.
“Resources in biodiversity conservation are woefully inadequate and novel data sources from social media provide openly available user-generated information about human-nature interactions, at an unprecedented spatio-temporal scale”, says Dr
Tourism is one of the fastest growing industries worldwide, and conservation areas are becoming popular destinations for people seeking nature-based experiences. “Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas represent some of the most important places for nature across the planet. Our results now allow us to pinpoint which of these sites face potentially the greatest threats or greatest opportunities resulting from high numbers of visitors.” says Dr Stuart Butchart, Chief Scientist at BirdLife International, who co-authored the study.
“Social media content and metadata contain useful information for understanding human-nature interactions in space and time”, says Prof.
Therefore, these sites should be priority for management actions aimed at minimizing pressure at sites. “However, data on threats do not yet exist for many highly visited Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas, even in North America and Europe. Mobilizing such data worldwide should be priority”, says Dr Thomas Brooks, Chief Scientist of IUCN, who also co-authored the paper.
“With the increasing use of social media worldwide, automatic content analysis of digital data sources will help us understand present or emerging human-related threats at sites where threats are currently unknown or difficult to assess”, says Adjunct professor
More information:
Dr. Anna Hausmann, Helsinki Lab of Interdisciplinary Conservation Science, Department of Geosciences and Geography, University of Helsinki, Finland.
Email:
Tel: +358(0)417088225
Twitter: @Haus_Panda