A PGIS and Citizen Science Approach to Monitoring the Condition of Upland Paths
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Master Thesis in Geographical Information Science nr 91 HOP!: a PGIS and citizen science approach to monitoring the condition of upland paths Niamh Harty 2018 Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science Centre for Geographical Information Systems Lund University Sölvegatan 12 S-223 62 Lund Sweden Niamh Harty (2018). HOP!: a PGIS and citizen science approach to monitoring the condition of upland paths Master degree thesis, 30 credits in Master in Geographical Information Science Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science, Lund University ii HOP!: a PGIS and citizen science approach to monitoring the condition of upland paths Niamh Harty Master thesis, 30 credits, in Geographical Information Sciences Supervisor Micael Runnström Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science iii Acknowledgements I would like to thank a lot of people who helped me along the road in this research. Firstly, I would like to thank Enda Mullen, District Conservation Officer in Wicklow Mountains National Park, for suggesting the topic of my research and for being so generous with her time, knowledge, advice and enthusiasm during the project. Sincere thanks also to Frieda Ryan, Deirdre Norris, Hans Koenders, and Emmet Gavin who were the volunteers who carried out surveys and provided the data which was an essential element of this project. Orla Donnelly and Valerie Lynch also provided great support on the hills. Thanks also to many of the members of the Bootleggers Hillwalking Club who listened to my ideas and gave me very valuable feedback and support. Helen Lawless deserves special mention for her unceasing enthusiasm about protecting the environment, and for putting me in touch with Enda Mullen in the first place. I would also like to thank my supervisor, Micael Runnström, for his help on the project, and also for teaching the course on Natural Area Tourism which led me to this area of research. Thanks to Shay Walsh, Bill Murphy, and other members of Mountain Meitheal for a great day on a trail and for giving me their opinions on my project. Many thanks also to Sue Power and Power Design for giving advice on how to make my app look professional – I really appreciate the help. Thank you also to Cormac MacDonnell and Doug Corrie of the National Trails Office, Maurice Gavin for suggesting I look at using PhoneGap, and to all those helpful generous people on Stack Overflow who share their knowledge. I would like to thank my colleague, Brian Caulfield, who first told me about the Master’s in GIS in Lund University. Finally and most importantly, I would like to thank my children, Killian, Mark and Cliona, for listening patiently to accounts of my progress on this Master’s. iv Abstract This research project was inspired by the increase in popularity of hillwalking and the problem of the lack of monitoring and maintenance of upland paths which may lead to serious deterioration of those paths. Wicklow Mountains National Park (WMNP), just south of Dublin City in Ireland, has a large network of mostly informal upland paths. A comprehensive baseline survey of many of these paths was carried out by a professional in 2002/3, but they have not been surveyed since. The aim of the research is to design an app to collect data on the condition of hiking paths in WMNP using a PGIS approach combined with citizen science, and to compare the current condition with that recorded in 2002/3 surveys. The PGIS approach to collecting data on path condition involved consultations with the District Conservation Officer of WMNP and hillwalkers, which were held at a number of stages during the project. These consultations informed the design of the path condition survey, the app, and the format of the presentation of the results in GIS. They also resulted in the recruitment of citizen scientists to carry out the surveys. An app called HOP! (which stands for How’s Our Path!) was developed in PhoneGap and runs on iOS and Android mobile devices. The app prompts the user to record path condition indicators, including path width, depth and braiding, and to take photographs at pre-set target points along a chosen hiking path. Eight of the twenty four WMNP paths surveyed in 2002/3 were successfully surveyed in 2016/17 with the HOP! app by five hillwalkers, acting as volunteer data collectors. The 2002/3 path condition data was converted into a structured format in order to display it in ArcGIS and in the app, and to compare the current condition with that recorded in 2002/3. The HOP! app was found to be easy to use and effective, and geolocated photographs, including a hiking pole to assist in judging scale, were found to be very valuable in recording the path condition. While 60% of the locations surveyed showed some improvement or no change in overall path condition, 71% of these locations had deteriorated in some way – path widening, deepening or braiding. The overall condition of six of the eight paths was found to have disimproved since they were surveyed in 2002/3. It is concluded that valuable path condition data can be collected by volunteers using the HOP! app. v vi Table of Contents Acknowledgements .............................................................................................................................................. iv Abstract ................................................................................................................................................................. v Table of Contents ................................................................................................................................................ vii Table of Figures .................................................................................................................................................... x Table of Tables .................................................................................................................................................... xii Abbreviations ..................................................................................................................................................... xiii Chapter 1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................................ 1 1.1 Hillwalking .................................................................................................................................................. 1 1.2 Impacts of hiking on natural areas and the importance of monitoring ........................................................ 1 1.3 Wicklow Mountains National Park .............................................................................................................. 1 1.4 Mobile technology ........................................................................................................................................ 3 1.5 PGIS and citizen science .............................................................................................................................. 4 1.6 Aim and Research Objectives ...................................................................................................................... 4 1.7 Outline of thesis ........................................................................................................................................... 5 Chapter 2 Background ......................................................................................................................................... 7 2.1 Path condition assessment ........................................................................................................................... 7 2.2 Mobile technology ...................................................................................................................................... 22 2.3 PGIS and citizen science ............................................................................................................................ 23 Chapter 3 Methodology ...................................................................................................................................... 29 3.1 Methodology – RO 1: To develop an app to collect data on hiking path conditions in WMNP, based on a PGIS and citizen science approach ................................................................................................................. 29 3.2 Methodology – RO 2: To compare the path condition data collected using PGIS and citizen science with that collected by a professional surveyor in 2002/3 ........................................................................................ 33 3.3 Methodology – RO 3: To convert the path condition surveys of 2002/3 into a format that can be used for comparison with the current condition ............................................................................................................ 36 3.4 Methodology – RO 4: To determine the condition of the WMNP hiking paths today, and to compare it with the condition in 2002/3 ............................................................................................................................ 37 Chapter 4 Results................................................................................................................................................ 39 4.1 Results – RO 1: To develop an app to collect data on hiking path conditions in WMNP, based on a PGIS and citizen science approach ..........................................................................................................................