We live in an era of unprecedented anthropogenic Global Change, facing the realities of both the climate emergency and the biodiversity crisis. The impacts of these crises are likely to become gradually more visible in everyday lives of people, including how people use protected areas and green spaces more generally. This change may be rapid and in itself generate completely new challenges and opportunities for biodiversity conservation. Understanding the trajectories of change in use of green areas is vital for proactive and successful conservation decisions of the future, in all parts of the world.
In MOBICON, aim to understand how people’s interaction with nature, and visits to nature in particular, change due to Global change. We will inspect explore both the physical visits and their digital representations, through the lens provided by Mobile Big Data sources, including social media, mobile phone records, sports applications and internet content. The gained knowledge will help to understand the implications of the observed and projected changes for biodiversity conservation.
When successful, the project will lead the way scientifically for applying big data analysis to understand nature visitations and changes therein. It will also support practical biodiversity conservation management decisions so that they may be made proactively instead of reactively.
This project is funded by the Kone foundation for four years (2022–2026)