I am currently doing back ground research on the impacts of recreation and it environmental effect in areas of high value ie national parks
This will form part of my 4th year college project which is looking at disturbance to wildlife from growing tourism numbers
I am looking for a method of measuring the impacts of increased tourist numbers in a particular area.
Any information would be greatfull
Regards
Brendan
One classic study is: http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/284/1857/20170433
With playback experiments researchers found human voices dramatically impacted where cougars hunt and how long they would feed on a kill. If you have funds to do fieldwork you could set up recorders to look at noise levels in various places (and if you wanted to get fancy, also setting up camera traps along trails to look at the relationship between noise and wildlife abundance).
You can divide the areas in different stratas based on different levels of tourism and then compare these stratas in terms of biodiversity. Of course also keep a control strata
your can have the look at the following link.
Chapter Measurement of Environmental Pollution: Types and Techniques
- Badges
- Science topic