Monitoring recreation on federally managed lands and waters—Aspects of visitor use book cover
Society · 2026 · English

Monitoring recreation on federally managed lands and waters—Aspects of visitor use

by Emily J. Wilkins, Dieta Hanson, Whitney Boone

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About this book

Emily J. Wilkins and colleagues examine how federal agencies learn about the people who use public lands and waters for recreation. Their focus extends beyond counting visits to the activities, experiences, attitudes and spending associated with those visits, showing how visitor research supports the management of shared outdoor places.

The report compares practices across seven agencies, including visitor intercept surveys and the ways survey programs are organized. It considers the effects of question wording, the kinds of information collected and the challenges of comparing results produced through different approaches.

A further discussion evaluates geolocated social media and mobile device location data as emerging sources of information. The closing sections identify opportunities for coordination and more efficient data collection. This is a research and management study of recreational visitor use, with practical relevance to survey design, public land administration and the interpretation of visitor experiences.

Cover photograph credits: Jennifer Jewett/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; Bob Wick/Bureau of Land Management; Scott Hyatt/U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; Beach Watch/NOAA and Farallones Marine Sanctuary Association; Preston Keres/USDA Forest Service; U.S. Bureau of Reclamation; National Park Service. The source edition identifies the applicable photographs as Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/). Original individual source links and credits are retained in the report.