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Crowd-Sourcing Relative Preferences for Ecosystem Services in The St. Louis River AOC (Poster)
Citation:
Angradi, T. AND J. Launspach. Crowd-Sourcing Relative Preferences for Ecosystem Services in The St. Louis River AOC (Poster). To be Presented at International Association for Great Lakes Research, Detroit, MI, May 15 - 19, 2017.
Impact/Purpose:
not applicable
Description:
Analysis of ecosystem service tradeoffs among AOC project scenarios is more reliable if valuation data are available. As an alternative to empirical data, we classified images from social media sites (SMS) Panoramio (n= 638), Instagram (n=2085), and Flickr (n=6643) for the St. Louis River AOC and a 100 m riparian buffer. We classified each image from the perspective of the photographer (beneficiary) using US EPA’s Final Ecosystem Goods and Services Classification System (FEGS-CS). After removing images not in the AOC, 65 (12%), 361 (25%), and 1035 (16%) of the images from Panoramio, Instagram, and Flickr, respectively, depicted an ecosystem service. The most frequently occurring non-ecosystem services depicted were indoor scenes, people outdoors not experiencing nature, bridges, and ships. Across SMS with repeated images removed, AOC-based recreational services were percentage ranked as follows: natural scene viewing/artistic inspiration, 25%; boating (sailing, powered, and human-powered), 28%, birding, 18%; fauna and flora viewing, 6%; trail and greenspace use, 8%; angling (shore, boat, and ice), 5%; dog walking, 2%; swimming, beach and ice use, 1%; biking, 1%; excursion rail, <1%. Non-recreational services of learning, sacred/inspiration, and commercial fishing were depicted in 5% of images. Potential biases are discussed.