University of Twente Student Theses
Assessment of nature visitation in Lake Tana Biosphere Reserve through crowdsourced data using social media
Dereje, Martha (2021) Assessment of nature visitation in Lake Tana Biosphere Reserve through crowdsourced data using social media.
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| Abstract: | Cultural Ecosystem Services (CES) contribute to cultural identity, livelihoods, and even survival, but are hard to measure and quantify due to their intangible and non-consumptive attributes. However, rapid growth in mobile network connections and the usage of social media has resulted in huge amounts of crowdsourced data. For measuring and mapping CES, geolocated and timestamped social media content are becoming more popular. In this study, social media platforms that are used for nature visitation assessment have been identified using a systematic literature review. The review of the studies reveals that social media platforms contain geolocation and timestamps, allowing for analysis of the spatial and temporal pattern of nature visitation. In this study, Flickr and Twitter are evaluated for their ability to describe nature visitation in space and time as they are open to access data. The locations and the time of photographs and tweets were used to assess the spatial and temporal distribution of nature visitation in the Lake Tana Biosphere Reserve. The spatial visitation pattern of the Lake Tana Biosphere Reserve was identified by quantifying the proxy Photo User Day (PUD) and Tweet User Day (TUD). This research shows that most PUDs and TUDs are clustered in the south (around Bahir Dar) and northeast part of the area and with some PUDs and TUDs in Lake Tana. The research also shows that most PUDs are close to the road and on the way to Blue Nile Falls (Tis-Isat Falls). The January month, that has two colourful festivals, has a higher number in both PUD and TUD. Assessing the spatial and temporal pattern of nature visitation offers to understand which elements of nature attract people to locations around the Lake Tana Biosphere Reserve and when people came. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Master) |
| Faculty: | ITC: Faculty of Geo-information Science and Earth Observation |
| Programme: | Geoinformation Science and Earth Observation MSc (75014) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/88642 |
| Export this item as: | BibTeX EndNote HTML Citation Reference Manager |
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