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Tourism is among the fastest growing industries worldwide and protected areas are among the main attractors for tourists seeking nature-based experiences. Nature-based tourism provides opportunities (e.g. by generating financial incentives and socio-political support for management and conservation), but also generates threats (e.g. by increasing human pressure and disturbance) to biodiversity conservation in protected areas. Information about human use and visitation, as well as threats related to human activity, in protected areas is key for informing sustainable management. Yet, such information at a global scale remains scarce and collecting new data is expensive. We live in the Information-age, where a wealth of digital information is becoming increasingly available thanks to the widespread use of technologies, such as smartphones. Web-sharing platforms, such as social media, are growing popular worldwide, and tourists use them to actively share their experiences (through pictures, text and videos) while visiting protected areas. Data mined from social media and can provide novel approaches to explore human activities and use of protected areas worldwide, and inform conservation science and practices. In this study, we use social media data from Twitter, Instagram, and Flickr to assess global patterns of human use in 12,765 Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas (IBAs). We hypothesize that attractiveness of the IBA increases the likelihood of posting and that social media postings intensify in areas where threats to biodiversity are high. We found that European and Asian IBAs had highest social media density compared to other continents. Using generalized linear models, we found that both species richness, habitat type (IBA attractiveness), accessibility and human footprint (used as threat proxy) best explained social media postings in IBAs, although the effect of each variable varied across different continents. In addition, we identified countries where IBAs are more (14% of all IBAs, mostly in Europe and North America and Asia) or less (16% of all IBAs mostly in Africa and Australia & Oceania) exposed to visitation pressure. Results provide new understanding of the use of fine scale data from social media to assess both popularity (recreational value) and, potentially, exposure to human pressure in priority sites for the persistence of species globally.
The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals have been established to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity for all. Delivery of the Sustainable Development Goals will require a healthy and productive environment. An understanding of the impacts of chemicals which can negatively impact environmental health is therefore essential to the delivery of the Sustainable Development Goals. However, current research on and regulation of chemicals in the environment tend to take a simplistic view and do not account for the complexity of the real world, which inhibits the way we manage chemicals. There is therefore an urgent need for a step change in the way we study and communicate the impacts and control of chemicals in the natural environment. To do this requires the major research questions to be identified so that resources are focused on questions that really matter. We present the findings of a horizon-scanning exercise to identify research priorities of the European environmental science community around chemicals in the environment. Using the key questions approach, we identified 22 questions of priority. These questions covered overarching questions about which chemicals we should be most concerned about and where, impacts of global megatrends, protection goals, and sustainability of chemicals; the development and parameterization of assessment and management frameworks; and mechanisms to maximize the impact of the research. The research questions identified provide a first-step in the path forward for the research, regulatory, and business communities to better assess and manage chemicals in the natural environment.