Conservation management practices and social media don’t always seem like a natural fit.

But knowing how and why people value the natural environment can help environmental managers manage their sites more effectively. At a more general level, the values that people place on nature affect which types of habitats and species are deemed important to conserve. This, in turn, affects where and when conservation takes place.

In the past, if researchers or park managers wanted to know what people thought about nature, they went out—clipboard in hand—and surveyed visitors in particular habitats. However, such an approach is time-consuming and results in a limited sample size.

Enter social media.

Social media can provide great insights into how people interact with nature—most people enjoy the outdoors with a camera and often share their photos on networking sites. Websites like Flickr contain millions of photographs of natural spaces that people have taken and chosen to make publicly available. Importantly, many of these photographs are “geo-tagged” (i.e., the location where the photograph was taken is recorded, give or take 10 meters). The photos visitors take and share, then, can provide valuable information for researchers and conservationists.

We at the Mangrove Lab (in the Department of Geography, National University of Singapore) are investigating how such data from social media can help us better understand the relationships people have with nature. Specifically, by looking at the photographs that were taken in Singapore’s coastal mangrove forests, we have been able to describe the ways that people interface with different patches of the area.

What do people think of Singapore’s mangroves?

Singapore is a small island city-state in Southeast Asia. 13% of the island was historically covered with mangrove forests, which are coastal forests that grow in shallow, muddy water. Since Singapore became independent in 1965, rapid population growth and urbanization has led to the loss of 90% of the original mangroves. Only a few small patches of mangrove forest now remain in Singapore, which are only accessible through managed interactions in nature reserves and public parks.

In the 700 photographs from the four mangrove areas we examined, we found there were significant differences in the types of photographs taken at each mangrove. The type of photograph taken at each mangrove site depended largely on the surrounding animals, plants, and the presence of man-made features such as rest shelters and boardwalks. For example, we found there was a higher percentage of wildlife and plant photographs at Sungei Buloh. This makes sense given that of the studied areas, Sungei Buloh has the largest continuous area of continuous mangrove and holds a Nature Reserve and several shelters for viewing wildlife.

The high precision of geo-tagging also allowed us to investigate how people interacted with the environment within one mangrove area. At Chek Jawa, a mangrove that is maintained by the National Parks Board, we found that photographs of wildlife were rarely taken on the ocean boardwalk. This was surprising, since the boardwalk was constructed to allow people to see animals like crabs and mudskipper fish at low tide. This led us to ask why visitors may not be taking photographs of these rare organisms—are they not aware of them or just not interested?

Our research inspires us to increase the interactions between visitors and these animals by improving the habitat to increase the abundance of organisms, updating signs and information boards that draw attention to the relevant species, or providing facts and information that help visitors better appreciate the animal diversity.

Wildlife managers can likewise use data mined from social media to better plan and run nature areas by providing the infrastructure to allow visitors to interact with the types of nature that they are most interested in—the method described here is just as suitable for New York’s Central Park as it is for Singapore’s Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve.

Social media: an emerging tool for conservation

Many conservationists and, increasingly, decision-makers are interested in valuing ecosystem services as a rationale for conservation, though valuations need quantitative data. Social media can provide conservationists and decision-makers with evidence that the public values open green spaces. We envision a huge increase in the use of social media to inform human-environment interactions in a variety of habitats in the near future.

This post is based on the recently published article: Richards & Friess, 2015. A rapid indicator of cultural ecosystem service usage at a fine spatial scale: content analysis of social media photographs. Ecological Indicators 53, 187-195.[link]

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Entering a mangrove by boat can be an unusual experience. Mangrove forests are flooded by high tides every day. West Papua, Indonesia.

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Mangrove forests are a unique, muddy and partially submerged tropical ecosystem. Pulau Ubin, Singapore.

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A mangrove forest on Pulau Ubin, Singapore at high tide. Pulau Ubin, Singapore.

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Mangroves are coastal, so often provide beautiful views of the surrounding area. Trang Province, Thailand.

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Mangroves are home to a rich variety of wildlife that can be seen showing interesting behaviour. Here, two fiddler crabs have an arm wrestle. Sungei Buloh, Singapore

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Mangrove forests host a huge amount of biodiversity, such as wild boar. Pulau Kukup, Malaysia.

FURTHER READING:

Image credit:  Dan Friess

About The Author

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Dan Richards

Dan Richards is a Research Fellow in the Mangrove Lab at the Department of Geography, National University of Singapore. The lab website is: www.themangrovelab.com