Considering Space and Stakeholders in Recreation Planning for Complex Protected Area

Recreation is an important component of many protected areas, and is often the main activity that attracts visitors from local to global scales. Managers and planners must decide how to provide for a diversity of recreation opportunities and values, without compromising the natural resources and characteristics of the protected area. Understanding the spatial trends in land-based visitor use patterns across protected areas such as the Adirondack Park, NY, can establish clear objectives for recreation management and planning, inform decisions to allocate resources, monitor for impacts, and develop more desirable recreation opportunities. Geographic patterns in visitor use can be explored as internal movement within the protected area, as well as travel to the protected area itself. However, spatially-referenced social data reflecting visitor preferences and use patterns is often limited, if available at all. We leveraged unique spatial datasets to examine the influence of spatial characteristics on trail-based visitor use patterns. We identified proximity to popular tourism communities and main travel corridors as significant social factors influencing visitor use patterns at the regional scale, while complex trail networks attracted significantly more users at the local sale (CH 2). However, further analyses of visitor use patterns indicated complex trail networks were underutilized, with visitors use concentrating along certain areas in the trail network (CH 3). Stepping back to assess the travel patterns of visitors to protected areas, we created usershed maps indicating that the travel distance and geographic distribution of visitors significantly differed according to categorized recreation destinations, with some demonstrating pull factors that attracted visitors from greater distances (CH 4). Implications for planning and management include identifying visitors with specific geographic distributions at the local and regional scale, as important stakeholders to engage in planning, tourism promotion, and environmental stewardship (CH 4). Finally, we examined the spatial data collected during a participatory, regional planning process and identified support for location bias, which caused participant-provided data to spatially cluster around workshop locations instead of dispersing across the region (CH 5). Analyzing spatial patterns in recreation use across scales can enhance and inform the management and participatory planning of protected areas.