Support for management actions to protect night sky quality: Insights from visitors to state and national park units in the U.S.

Light pollution is a global phenomenon where anthropogenic light sources continue to grow unabated, affecting both social and ecological systems. This is leaving parks and protected areas as some of the last vestiges of naturally dark environments for protecting views of the night sky. Yet, even parks and protected areas have outdoor lighting.

Social media reveal ecoregional variation in how weather influences visitor behavior in U.S. National Park Service units.

Daily weather affects total visitation to parks and protected areas, as well as visitors' experiences. However, it is unknown if and how visitors change their spatial behavior within a park due to daily weather conditions. We investigated the impact of daily maximum temperature and precipitation on summer visitation patterns within 110 U.

Uses and Limitations of Social Media to Inform Visitor Use Management in Parks and Protected Areas: A Systematic Review.

Social media are being increasingly used to inform visitor use management in parks and protected areas. We review the state of the scientific literature to understand the ways social media has been, and can be, used to measure visitation, spatial patterns of use, and visitors' experiences in parks and protected areas. Geotagged social media are a good proxy for actual visitation; however, the correlations observed by previous studies between social media and other sources of visitation data vary substantially.

Attendance trends threaten future operations of America's state park systems.

This research examines how the operating expenditures of America's state park systems will be affected by a continued growth in attendance consistent with observed trends as well as potential climate futures. We construct a longitudinal panel dataset (1984-2017) describing the operations and characteristics of all 50 state park systems. These data are analyzed with a time-varying stochastic frontier model.

Bringing forecasting into the future: Using Google to predict visitation in U.S. national parks.

In recent years, visitation to U.S. National Parks has been increasing, with the majority of this increase occurring in a subset of parks.

Communicating information on nature-related topics: Preferred information channels and trust in sources.

How information is communicated influences the public's environmental perceptions and behaviors. Information channels and sources both play an important role in the dissemination of information. Trust in a source is often used as a proxy for whether a particular piece of information is credible.