Snapshots of Nature-Based Recreation Across Rural Landscapes: Insights from Geotagged Photographs in the Northeastern United States.

Nature-based recreation is of increasing economic importance to rural communities transitioning away from traditional natural resource extraction. Rural areas are rich in cultural ecosystem services (CES) that function as essential public goods, providing benefits to livelihoods and fostering conservation of large landscapes. Geotagged photographs from social media platforms capture detailed information on public use of natural areas that can be useful for stakeholders interested in promoting resilient social-ecological systems, but applications of such "big data" are often limited in either spatiotemporal or thematic scope.