Search Results (178)

This paper presents a conceptual and methodological framework for using Geographical Information Systems (GIS) to “deep map” cultural heritage sites along Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way, with a focus on the 1588 Spanish Armada wrecks in County Kerry and archaeological landscapes in County Sligo’s “Yeats Country.” Drawing on interdisciplinary dialogues from the humanities, social sciences, and geospatial sciences, it illustrates how digital spatial technologies can excavate, preserve, and sustain intangible cultural knowledge embedded within such palimpsestic landscapes. Using MAXQDA 24 software to mine and code historical, literary, folkloric, and environmental texts, the study constructed bespoke GIS attribute tables and visualizations integrated with elevation models and open-source archaeological data. The result is a richly layered cartographic method that reveals the spectral and affective dimensions of heritage landscapes through climate, memory, literature, and spatial storytelling. By engaging with “deep mapping” and theories such as “Spectral Geography,” the research offers new avenues for sustainable heritage conservation, cultural tourism, and public education that are sensitive to both ecological and cultural resilience in the West of Ireland. Full article

In the context of macroeconomic recovery and accelerating digital transformation in the post-pandemic era, the hotel industry in China is undergoing profound structural changes. This research investigates the core competencies required for hotel managers to navigate these challenges. Data was collected via a quantitative survey involving a structured questionnaire, was conducted among hotel managers in Shanghai, China, resulting in 404 valid responses. Employing exploratory factor analysis using SPSS, this study identifies seven key competency dimensions encompassing 36 ranked items, including interpersonal communication, leadership, operational knowledge, human resource management, financial analysis, technology, and administrative management. The results show that economic recovery has brought new opportunities but also challenges to the hotel industry, and that managers must possess a diverse set of core competencies to adapt to the demanding new market changes. The novelty of this research lies in its empirical grounding and its focus on the intersection of digitalization and economic recovery within China’s hotel industry. It pioneers a dynamic strategic competency framework tailored to the evolving demands of the hotel industry during a period of economic volatility, providing empirical evidence and advice for optimizing the industry’s talent training systems. Simultaneously, it brings a new perspective for dealing with the recovery path for the hotel enterprises in other urban and travel destinations, aiming to promote industry sustainability and competitive advantages. Future research could extend the proposed framework by exploring its applicability across different cultural and economic contexts. Full article

Global warming and the increasing frequency and intensity of heat waves are resulting in more frequent unfavourable weather conditions for outdoor activities, especially during the summer. The building environment can alter weather conditions, resulting in higher temperatures (urban heat island). Human towers are cultural activities that typically take place outdoors and were declared a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2010. The objectives of this study are (i) to analyse the weather conditions (i.e., temperature and relative humidity) during the human tower exhibitions, (ii) to determine discomfort during the exhibitions based on the heat index (HI) resulting from the combination of temperature and humidity, and (iii) to compare records from the square with those recorded in the nearest automatic meteorological station (AMS) belonging to the Catalan Meteorological Service network. To determine the weather conditions in the squares during the human tower exhibitions, a pair of sensors recorded temperature and relative humidity data in six exhibitions performed in the summer of 2024. The temperature exceeded 30 °C in five of the six human tower exhibitions analysed. In the cases of the Santa Anna exhibition (El Vendrell) and the Sant Fèlix exhibition (Vilafranca del Penedès), one of the sensors recorded temperatures above 30 °C throughout the entire duration of the exhibition. There was a predominance of HI values falling within the caution threshold in the two sensors of three exhibitions and within the extreme caution threshold in the two sensors of the other three exhibitions. The temperature is higher in urban squares than in the surrounding rural areas. The key factor is the urban heat island phenomenon, which poses health risks to both human tower builders and attendees. Adaptation measures are therefore necessary to guarantee the safety of the participants. Full article

When it comes to wine communication, winery names can serve as multidimensional communication mechanisms. Their various aspects of communication concern the historical context, tourism geography, socio-economic tourism development, wine knowledge, and even gastronomy. On this basis, a whole communication strategy could be developed, which could lead to progressive interaction and networking with consumers. Quality needs to be fully and properly communicated through multiple channels. This paper aims to reveal the importance of the way in which wine producers in Northern Greece construct their brand identity through strategic naming choices—such as Estate, Ktima, Château, or the producer’s family name—as opposed to more neutral or descriptive labels. The findings suggest that winery names contribute significantly to consumer perception, place branding, and the development of wine tourism. The choice of a winery name influences regional identity, strengthens the connection with local traditions, and enhances the commercial success and tourism appeal of the region. Full article

Forested wetlands in temperate mountain ecosystems play a critical role in carbon sequestration and biodiversity maintenance, yet their accurate delineation remains challenging due to spectral similarity with forests and anthropogenic interference. Here, we present an optimized two-stage Random Forest framework integrating 2019–2022 growing season datasets from Sentinel-1 C-SAR, ALOS-2 L-PALSAR, Sentinel-2 MSI, and Landsat-8 TIRS with environmental covariates. The methodology first applied NDBI thresholding (NDBI > 0.12) to exclude 94% of urban/agricultural areas through spectral masking, then implemented an optimized Random Forest classifier (ntree = 1200, mtry = 28) with 10-fold cross-validation, leveraging 42 features including L-band HV backscatter (feature importance = 47), Sentinel-2 SWIR (Band12; importance = 57), and land surface temperature gradients. This study pioneers a 10 m resolution forest swamp map in the Changbai Mountain wetlands, achieving 87.18% overall accuracy (Kappa = 0.84) with strong predictive performance (AUC = 0.89). Forest swamps showed robust classification metrics (PA = 80.37%, UA = 86.87%), driven by L-band SAR’s superior discriminative power (p < 0.05). Quantitative assessment demonstrated that L-band SAR increased classification accuracy in canopy penetration scenarios by 4.2% compared to optical-only approaches, while thermal-IR features reduced confusion with forests. Forested swamps occupied 229.95 km² (9% of protected areas), predominantly in transitional ecotones (720–850 m elevation) between herbaceous wetlands and forest. This study establishes that multi-sensor fusion enables operational wetland monitoring in topographically complex regions, providing a transferable framework for temperate mountain ecosystems. The dataset advances precision conservation strategies for these climate-sensitive habitats, supporting sustainable development goals targets for wetland protection through enhanced machine learning interpretability and anthropogenic interference mitigation. Full article

Tourism and recreation are critical components of global economies and are significantly impacted by climate change due to their climate-dependent nature. This study aimed to assess the effects of climate change on outdoor recreation within the tourism sector, as perceived by stakeholders and tourists, through a systematic review. Following the PRISMA 2020 guidelines, a comprehensive search of the Web of Science database was conducted, resulting in a systematic review of 42 publications that met the inclusion–exclusion criteria out of a total of 226 publications published between 2007 and 2024. The comprehensive analysis identified four primary themes: vulnerability, adaptation, climate change perception, and tourist behavior. The USA emerges as the most researched country, followed by the UK, Germany, and France. The predominant research methods include regression analysis (37.2%) and thematic analysis (20.9%). Coping behaviors regarding climate change are influenced by various factors, such as geography, participant expertise, the type of activity, and the development levels of countries. Tourists adopt locational, temporal, strategic, activity substitution, and informational coping strategies in response to climate change. Conversely, businesses face challenges like reservation cancellations and mitigate global warming effects by modifying activities and adjusting routes due to rising water levels and drought. Adaptation projects are categorized into research–education, management, policy, behavior change, structural, and technical solutions. Implementing diversification strategies enables businesses to enhance their resilience and reduce environmental vulnerabilities. Additionally, raising awareness among visitors about the consequences of climate change is essential in fostering responsible behavior and promoting sustainable practices. The analysis reveals the lack of a holistic perspective in tourism studies, highlighting the need for projects that involve all stakeholders and support undeveloped and developing countries. Furthermore, it was observed that the perspectives of employees and residents were inadequately addressed in the studies examined. Full article

Chlorophyll absorbs light energy and converts it into chemical energy, making it a crucial biochemical parameter for monitoring vegetation health, detecting environmental stress, and predicting physiological states. Accurate and rapid estimation of canopy chlorophyll content is crucial for assessing vegetation dynamics, ecological changes, and growth patterns. Remote sensing technology has become an indispensable tool for monitoring vegetation chlorophyll content since 2015, with more than 50 research papers published annually, contributing to a substantial body of case studies. This review discusses remote sensing technologies currently used for estimating vegetation chlorophyll content, focusing on four key aspects: the acquisition of reference datasets, the identification of optimal spectral variables, the selection of estimation models, and the analysis of application scenarios. The results indicate that spectral bands in the visible and red-edge regions (e.g., 530 nm, 670 nm, and 705 nm) provide high prediction accuracy. Machine learning methods, such as random forest and support vector regression, exhibit excellent performance, with determination coefficients (R²) typically exceeding 0.9, although overfitting remains an issue. Although radiative transfer models are slightly less accurate (R² = 0.6–0.8), they provide greater interpretability. Hybrid models integrating machine learning and radiative transfer show strong potential to balance accuracy and generalizability. Future research should improve model generalizability for different vegetation types and environmental conditions and integrate multi-source remote sensing data to improve spatial and temporal resolution. Combining physical models with data processing methods, such as artificial intelligence, can improve scalability, cost-effectiveness, and real-time monitoring capabilities. Full article

The study of visitor experiences incorporating user-generated content from accommodation platforms is a distinct trend in the geography of tourism. Our research aims to better understand how this content can be instrumentalized in order to assess the viability of Airbnb accommodation ranks based on specific case studies from Greece, Italy, and Spain. The methodological frame we propose is based on two separate tools. First, the users’ reviews are summarized using sentiment analysis techniques, and the positive component is extracted as a separate indicator (predictor). The second step consists of mobilizing geographically weighted regression (GWR) to identify of the potential statistical association between the Airbnb apartments’ ranks and the quantitative outputs of sentiment analysis. The results obtained for 13 case studies are based on more than 4.6 million reviews. They clearly emphasize a gap between the rank proposed by the platform and the positive scores of sentiment analysis for the accommodation units analyzed (88,053). Despite some limitations linked to the quantity of data needed to be integrated into the investigation, the methodological frame can be transferred to other destinations, providing useful information about the potential distortions of tourism markets by the meta-description of accommodation systems. Full article

Coastal foredune blowout is a significant indicator of shoreline retreat, activation of backshore dune fields, and land desertification. Among current research on the terminal phase of coastal foredune blowouts, few studies explain blowouts’ morphological and airflow interaction mechanisms in the late stage through comprehensive field surveys and observations. In this study, the coastal blowout on the foredune at Tannanwan Beach, Pingtan Island, China, is investigated to explore the morphodynamics and evolutionary characteristics of blowout morphology. High-resolution RTK GPS technology and two-dimensional ultrasonic anemometers are utilized to repeatedly measure and observe the morphology of late-stage bowl blowouts. The results revealed that the following: (1) During the entire survey period, the bowl blowout is characterized by deepening erosion of the lateral walls and accretion in the deflation basin, with the maximum erosion depth on the east lateral wall reaching up to 3.99 m and the maximum accumulation height occurring in the front half of the deflation basin. (2) The wind direction and the morphology of the bowl blowout significantly impact the airflow characteristics within the blowout, and the airflow distribution within the blowout further affects the development of the blowout morphology. (3) The bowl blowout is in the late stage of its life cycle. Full article

Ecosystem services (ES) are key benefits that humans derive from natural ecosystems, including provisioning, regulating, and cultural services. As urbanization accelerates globally, urban green spaces (UGS), increasingly recognized for their role in improving environmental quality and enhancing human well-being, provide essential ES that help mitigate the effects of urbanization. However, the factors influencing public preferences for these services, particularly environmental knowledge and religiosity, remain underexplored. This study seeks to bridge this gap by examining how environmental knowledge and religiosity shape public preferences for ecosystem services, with a particular focus on regulating services (e.g., air quality improvement, carbon sequestration) and cultural services (e.g., outdoor recreation, aesthetic enjoyment). A survey of 1236 respondents conducted in China reveals that both environmental knowledge and religiosity significantly enhance preferences for regulating services, especially in relation to air quality improvement (M = 4.33) and carbon sequestration (M = 4.26). Furthermore, higher education levels correlate with stronger preferences for ecosystem services, and coastal residents exhibit greater preferences for these services compared with inland residents. This study emphasizes that disseminating environmental knowledge through education and religious practices can significantly enhance public awareness of ecosystem services and foster greater support for green infrastructure investments. Policy recommendations include the adoption of targeted communication strategies in urban green space planning to enhance public engagement and support. Full article

Wildlife sanctuaries have gained popularity in recent years as settings for research into human–animal relations, captive wildlife tourism, and rehabilitation. While scholars from animal studies, ethics, geography, and ethnography disciplines have turned their attention to sanctuaries, there is still limited engagement from the fields of tourism, conservation, and animal welfare sciences. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, this paper addresses the ‘sanctuary gap’ by offering a synthesis of the existing research related to wildlife sanctuary tourism. To this end, the paper suggests preliminary definitions for wildlife sanctuary tourism and wildlife sanctuary attractions, as well as a typology of sanctuaries along a spectrum from greenwashed to just. It aims to illuminate the shadowy presence of wildlife sanctuaries across multiple disciplines and identify areas for future research. The discussion considers how sanctuaries are well-suited to research on multispecies communities, as well as the conservation and welfare of wild animals. Full article

When landscapes tell stories about people, the physical context, and how they become part of the identity of the inhabitants, the land acquires meaning for tourists due to their authenticity. Monument Valley and Alentejo are places where identity and landscape are crucial for touristic activity. It remains to be seen whether the future is massification or whether it will be able to maintain a balance between landscapes, culture, and sustainable tourism. From a Humanistic Geography point of view, we have conducted research based on in-depth interviews that show an unstable balance between a way of life and having economic income. Full article

This study focuses on constructing a heritage corridor for traditional villages in the Taihu Lake region, aiming to promote the cultural heritage preservation and sustainable development of these villages through innovative pathway design. Based on the spatial distribution characteristics of traditional villages across five cities surrounding Taihu Lake (Suzhou, Wuxi, Changzhou, Huzhou, and Jiaxing) and the existing transportation network, this research integrates the Circuit Effective Conductance (CEC) theory with ArcGIS spatial analysis methods to optimize the pathways of the heritage corridor. The results show that the expected nearest neighbor distance of 307 traditional villages in the Taihu Lake region is 5245.61 m, with the actual nearest neighbor distance being 3385.60 m, a z-score of −11.85, and a nearest neighbor index of 0.645786, indicating that traditional villages in this region exhibit clustered distribution. Combined with kernel density results, a “dual-core–four zones–multiple scatter points” spatial structure of traditional villages in the Taihu Lake region is revealed, with Dongshan Island and Wujiang District serving as the primary and secondary cultural cores, respectively. By establishing a “dual-ring heritage corridor” spatial network, a stable pathway for village heritage preservation and cultural transmission has been formed, consisting of 137 heritage corridors. Meanwhile, the CEC model demonstrates high adaptability in generating circular heritage corridors, particularly in creating closed-loop structures around the lake, thereby enhancing the spatial connectivity of the corridors and facilitating the effective flow of cultural resources. Through the strategic design of outer and inner ring corridors, this study successfully links traditional villages in the Taihu Lake region and develops optimal travel routes. The study provides practical solutions for the protection, revitalization, and integration of cultural tourism in the region and offers a new perspective for constructing heritage corridors in lakefront geographies in China. Full article

Against the backdrop of rapid global urbanization, studying the spatiotemporal evolution of cross-regional tourism corridors can effectively guide decision-making for sustainable tourism development. However, previous studies have overlooked the role of geographical space in the construction of tourism corridors, particularly the spatiotemporal characteristics of ecological and socio-economic factors. Taking the central region of the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) in China as a case study, this research utilizes remote sensing images, POI data, and other datasets from 2000, 2010, and 2020. Through a combination of landscape value assessment, resistance surface evaluation system, MCR model, and geographical detector, the study examines the spatiotemporal evolution characteristics of cross-regional tourism corridors and their potential influencing factors. The results indicate that (1) between 2000 and 2020, the areas with prominent landscape value in the core region of the YRD decreased, while areas with less prominent landscape value significantly increased. However, the overall distribution became increasingly fragmented. The resistance values in the main low-resistance areas of the study region continuously increased, and the gap between high- and low-resistance areas narrowed. (2) Over the 20-year period, the total length of the corridors in the study area increased by 333.3%, with the number of corridors rising from 91 to 435. The number of source points grew from 14 to 31, and corridor density increased from 0.04% to 0.19%. The growth rate was fastest from 2000 to 2010 and then gradually slowed down. (3) In terms of influencing factors, population density and road length together explained 62.3% of the variation in corridor length evolution. The evolution of corridor number and source points was mainly influenced by public infrastructure levels and road density, while the evolution of corridor density was primarily driven by road length and public infrastructure. In conclusion, we analyze the spatiotemporal evolution characteristics and influencing factors of cross-regional tourism corridors from the perspective of tourism geography at multiple scales. The findings provide significant insights into promoting the integration of cross-regional tourism resources, achieving sustainable development of all-region tourism, and optimizing the spatial allocation of territorial resources. Full article

Aquaculture and tourism can both be important industries for economic development, particularly in isolated geographies endowed with natural beauty. However, spatial conflict can arise, particularly along scenic coastlines, such as that in Oban, Scotland. This area is notable for the frequent overlap between marine tours and cage culture sites, with tours passing by or near these aquaculture locations. This study aims to understand whether tourists who encounter aquaculture operations during these tours have positive attitudes toward aquaculture–tourism integration, which refers to the favourable perception and acceptance of the coexistence of aquaculture and tourism activities, and whether this exposure influences their intention to consume locally farmed aquatic products. A face-to-face survey was conducted to recruit 200 tourists who experienced marine tours in Oban, Scotland. Hierarchical cluster analysis identified three types of tourists based on tourism motivation: (1) Multiple motivations, (2) “Relaxers”, and (3) “Outgoing nature enthusiasts”. Among the three tourist segments, the “Relaxers” were particularly unfamiliar with the concept of farming aquatic food. In general, the majority of tourists were positive about being exposed to aquaculture during marine tours. The results of the structural equation modelling analysis indicated that attitudes towards being exposed to aquaculture during marine tours mediate the relationship between attitudes towards aquaculture and the intention to eat locally farmed aquatic food. Motivational tourism factors, socialisation, and learning positively and significantly influenced attitudes towards being exposed to aquaculture during marine tours. Compared to age, gender, education, income, and travel frequency, only tourists’ dietary patterns significantly influenced behavioural intention. The findings suggest that aquaculture might serve as a potential site for social knowledge exchange, which might be crucial not only for tourism to be successful but also for promoting aquaculture’s social acceptability. The results can be used to inform policymakers, marketers, and aquaculture/tourism practitioners to promote sustainable aquaculture tourism in Scotland or similar sites where tourism and aquaculture coexist. Full article