Estimating Recreational Visitation on Public Lands and Waters

Federally managed public lands and waters attract nearly one billion visits each year, and accurate visitation data are crucial for managing resources and guiding policy decisions. Our report explores how Federal agencies collect and use visitation data gathered from established on-site methods and emerging sources like social media, mobile device activity, and community science, promising approaches that bring their own challenges.

Speakers:

• Emily Wilkins, PhD (USGS)
• Christian Crowley, PhD (DOI)
  
• Dieta Hanson, PhD (Univ. of Washington)

Learning Objectives:

1. List traditional and emerging data sources for estimating recreation visitation

2. List strengths and potential issues of various data sources 

3. Apply Visitation data to management and policy

Resources:

• D. Hanson et al. "Monitoring recreation on Federally managed lands and waters: visitor estimation"
• Companion paper preprint the second report: https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/usq34_v1 This is a peer-reviewed preprint; we expect it to be published as a USGS Scientific Investigations Report later this year after undergoing copyediting and formatting.