Using social media as data to better understand recreation on public lands

More people visit public lands for recreation than for any other reason, which makes providing opportunities for sustainable recreation a key service that national forests can provide. Recreation managers, however, frequently lack basic information on the amount and extent of recreation use. Traditional approaches that rely on visitor traffic counts and in-person interviews to measure visits and recreation can be costly and may not provide needed information in a timely way.

A team of scientists with the USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station and the University of Washington, along with recreation managers from the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, developed a method to use social media, such as Twitter and Instagram posts, to provide land managers with useful measures of recreational use. They tested it in the heavily visited forest an hour outside the Seattle metropolitan area, and on more rural, less visited public lands in northern New Mexico.

The team found that social media can be used to measure visits to trails and sites on public lands with more detail than traditional recreation monitoring systems. These data can improve visitation estimates and the ability to assess rapid changes in recreation use. However, social media appears to complement, rather than replace, traditional monitoring systems, which can provide valuable information on types of use, visitor attitudes, and perceptions of recreational experiences.

Citation

McDaniel, Josh; White, Eric M.; Derrien, Monika; Blahna, Dale. 2021. Using social media as data to better understand recreation on public lands. Science Findings 238. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station. 5 p.

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