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Ridding, L.E.; Hooftman, D.A.P.; Redhead, J.W.; Willcock, S.

Weekly, monthly and yearly recreation demand maps for the UK

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This dataset is available under the terms of the Open Government Licence

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https://doi.org/10.5285/bd3bf607-a3b2-423b-b07b-9c41e84746ee
This dataset contains recreation demand maps for the UK based on weekly, monthly and yearly visit frequencies. Recreation includes activities such as walking, hiking, cycling, etc, i.e., ‘outdoor non-vehicular recreation’. Recreation demand was calculated as the number of projected visits for local recreation, estimated using the universal law of human mobility (Schläpfer et al., 2021, Nature). Recreation demand maps are supplied at 250 m resolution in a British National Grid transverse Mercator projection (EPSG 27700). For each visit frequency (weekly, monthly and yearly), there is a map with and without attractiveness included in the calculation, where protected areas are used a proxy for attractiveness.

This research was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) under research programme NE/W005050/1 AgZero+ : Towards sustainable, climate-neutral farming. AgZero+ is an initiative jointly supported by NERC and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).
Publication date: 2023-06-27
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More information

View numbers valid from 27 June 2023 Download numbers valid from 20 June 2024 (information prior to this was not collected)

Format

TIFF

Spatial information

Study area
Spatial representation type
Raster
Spatial reference system
OSGB 1936 / British National Grid

Provenance & quality

Predicted recreation demand was expressed as the total number of projected visits for local recreation in target cells. To estimate the total number of projected visits in each 250 m target cell, a bespoke version of the universal law of human mobility was used (Schläpfer et al., 2021), as seen in the function below:

Demand_i = Attractiveness_i × ∑ |j=1 to j= all| [(Population_j) / ((Frequency_ij × Traveling distance_ij)^∝)]

with i the target cell, j the source cell and the scaling factor α = 2.17, following Schläpfer et al. (2021); frequency is expressed as number of visits per year; travelling distance in kilometres.

The distance decay gravity function considers the number of visits to single target cells (i) depending on the "Population" size in a source cell (j), corrected by the "Traveling distance" from that source cell to the target cell and the "Attractiveness" of the target cell – the assumed relative likelihood of visiting that target cell. Traveling distance was estimated non-Euclidean, as a cost-weighted distance using the UK road network in 2.5 km cells and the distance to the nearest road within cells. The number of visits per year from the source cell to the target cell, i.e. the Frequency, is also included (weekly, monthly and yearly), since people tend to visit more often where there is a shorter distance to travel. Thus, for a given distance more predicted visits will arise from more densely populated cells compared with less populated cells, whereas at shorter distances more visits are predicted than at longer distances for a given source population density. For each target cell, the equation is summed over all potential source cells. See documentation accompanying the data for a detailed description of the data used for each parameter in the equation.

Licensing and constraints

This dataset is available under the terms of the Open Government Licence

Cite this dataset as:
Ridding, L.E.; Hooftman, D.A.P.; Redhead, J.W.; Willcock, S. (2023). Weekly, monthly and yearly recreation demand maps for the UK. NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/bd3bf607-a3b2-423b-b07b-9c41e84746ee

Citations

Hooftman, D.A.P., Ridding, L.E., Redhead, J.W., & Willcock, S. (2023). National scale mapping of supply and demand for recreational ecosystem services. In Ecological Indicators (Vol. 154, p. 110779). Elsevier BV. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2023.110779

Correspondence/contact details

Ridding, L.E.
UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology
Maclean Building, Benson Lane, Crowmarsh Gifford
Wallingford
Oxfordshire
OX10 8BB
UNITED KINGDOM
 enquiries@ceh.ac.uk

Authors

Ridding, L.E.
UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology
Hooftman, D.A.P.
Lactuca: Environmental Data Analyses and Modelling
Redhead, J.W.
UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology
Willcock, S.
Rothamsted Research

Other contacts

Rights holder
Rothamsted Research
Custodian
NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centre
 info@eidc.ac.uk
Publisher
NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centre
 info@eidc.ac.uk

Additional metadata

Topic categories
environment
society
INSPIRE theme
Environmental Monitoring Facilities
Keywords
accessibility , cultural ecosystem services , landscape , mapping , Mapping , natural areas protection , protected areas , recreation , UK
Funding
Natural Environment Research Council Award: NE/W005050/1
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council
Last updated
18 April 2024 15:03