6GEO4 Unit 6 Consuming the Rural Landscape-Leisure and Tourism

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6GEO4 Unit 6 Consuming the Rural
Landscape-Leisure and Tourism
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What is this option about?

• This option focuses on the increasing demands
  placed on rural areas by the growth of leisure
  and tourism. You will study the patterns and
  trends experienced globally of such demands on a
  range of rural locations from the edge of urban
  areas to deep wilderness
• You will include an analysis of these consumption
  pressures on often fragile human and physical
  landscapes, and how effectively management may
  address these.

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CONTENTS

• Growth of leisure tourism landscapes
• Significance and fragility
• Impacts
• Management Issues

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What is leisure, tourism recreation?
Non -Local recreation
Local recreation
Business personal travel
LEISURE-non working time
TOURISM
Business and recreational travel
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The option summarised
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Enquiry Q 1 Growth of leisure tourism
landscapes

• This includes the concepts and processes of
• Rebranding
• Commodification and valorization of post
  productive landscapes
• Honeypot development
• Wilderness continuum
• Rewilding
• Rights of indigenous people
• Auditing rural landscapes
• Designating protected areas such as country and
  National Parks, nature reserves

• The rise of leisure tourism and pleasure
  periphery
• Range of rural landscapes affected
• Attitudes of players involved
• Conflicts

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Rural landscapes continuum
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Key concept the widening and deepening pleasure
periphery

• 1800 source close to home / local W Europe and
  E USA
• 1900 Periphery (1) based in NW Europe
• 1930 Periphery (2) extends to W Mediterranean
• 1950 Periphery (3) includes all of the
  Mediterranean
• 1970 Periphery (4) travel far away and long haul
  becomes more readily available
• 1990 Periphery (5) tourists are able access the
  worlds remotest places eg Antarctica
• 21st C consolidation? More extreme activities in
  existing areas . Backlash to ecotourism. Rise of
  demand from SE Asia especially China 

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Key Players
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Enquiry Q 2

• Physical significance and ecological value
• Fragility of some rural areas
• Degree of threat, using models
• Use of qualitative and quantitative environmental
  quality measures

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Fragility, thresholds , capacities and resilience

• Key models and concepts to this option are
• Resilience , basically the ability of an
  ecosystem and landscape, whether physical or
  human, to withstand pressure and stay intact
• Carrying capacity, the ability or capacity of an
  area to deal with the numbers and demands of
  visitors who use an area.
• It is based on the idea that any geographical
  system has certain limits or thresholds. When
  exceeded, changes may affect not only the
  physical components of an environment (
  ecosystems, soil and water...) but human
  environments, especially culture and quality of
  life.

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Sustainable use-renewal and resiliency models

• Sometimes demands from leisure and tourism
  exceed the carrying capacity of the system
• Sustainable management any location is left
  in as good a state as it was before visitors,
  even enhanced.
• In a sustainable system, successive use will not
  reoccur until recovery has taken place-
• Recovery rates vary depending on the ecosystem
  /landscape involved- more fragile less resilient
  ones eg tundra and high altitude ones will be
  slower than temperate chalk grasslands or sand
  dunes.
• Model adapted from Trudgill, Flintoff and Cohen
  1998

use
Recovery
State or strength of the system
Threshold of normal functioning
Threshold beyond which there is no recovery
collapse
Time
Where rates of use exceed recovery rates,
degradation occurs and a threshold is reached
beyond which recovery is not possible
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Changing Carrying capacities by positive
management
Stress on area, management needed
Initial threshold for carrying capacity
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Categories of recreational capacity

• Environmental influenced by
• resistance,- the ability of an ecosystem or
  community to absorb use without being disturbed
• resilience- the speed of recovery, if ever of a
  system.
• Physical or design If demand exceeds supply,
  then the physical capacity is exceeded. Includes
  the
• at-one-time principle
• throughput capacity.
• Economic if coping with visitor problems is
  more costly than their revenue.
• Perceptual too many people concentrated in one
  spot at one time may lead to a feeling of over
  crowding . Some activities are more crowd
  tolerant or crowd sensitive.

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Measures of significance to audit landscapes

• Quantitative

• Qualitative

• Numerical data is useful for statistical analysis
  and for GIS systems
• Examples
• Species frequency and diversity
• Land values
• Landscape diversity
• Resource value eg forestry products

• Subjective, non-numerical data includes the
  perceptions of different groups about an area.
  Inevitably subjective and biased and hence often
  considered unreliable.
• Examples Bipolar and environmental quality
  indices may be used, together with field sketches
  and photographs
• However people choose to visit an area more for
  their perceptions than empirical knowledge.
  Increasing use of non-quantitative measures in
  management

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Enquiry Q 3

• Impacts positive and negative
• Changes in impact over time
• Threats and opportunities in areas of differing
  economic development

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Changing impacts over time
Numbers of visitors
Rejuvenation, possibly through rebranding of area
stagnation-
4.Antagonism covert and overt aggression to
visitors
consolidation
3.Irritation concern and annoyance over price
rises, crime, rudeness, and cultural rules being
broken
Decline of area
2.Apathy increasing indifference with larger
numbers
Development
involvement
1. Euphoria delight in contact
Exploitation
Time
Model of changes in the impacts on rural
landscapes by leisure tourism incorporating
Butlers Life cycle and Doxeys irritation models
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Commodification of the rural landscape

• Adding value to the countryside is a key element
  of new uses of many areas in areas where food
  production is no longer a priority or where a
  tourism hot spot develops
• Rebranding may happen spontaneously and gradually
  as locals adapt to change and offer new
  attractions to urban populations
• Rebranding may also be part of specific
  government policies to reimage and rejuvenate
  areas suffering population decline and lower
  qualities of life
• The media plays a large part in any valorisation

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Visitor influences in rural areas

• POSITIVE IMPACTS/OPPORTUNITIES
• Economic
• Income generator
• Employment
• Multiplier effect
• Diversifies economy
• Opportunity for investment, innovation
• Supports existing businesses
• Develops local crafts/trades
• Social
• Fosters pride of place
• Community infrastructure
• Cultural exchange
• Community spirit
• Safeguards customs
• Environment
• Key factor in revitalizing natural, cultural,
  historical resources
• Village renewal cleaner countryside
• Fosters conservation/ preservation resources

• NEGATIVE IMPACTS/THREATS
• Economic
• Development marketing cost
• Demands on local public services, especially
  water and waste
• Seasonal and part time employment
• low wages
• Leakages of profits
• External changes an affect visitor numbers
  rapidly and make economy unstable eg Foot
  Mouth outbreak of 2001, terrorism
• Increased cost of living to locals eg by second
  homes
• Land use conflicts- damage trespass costs
• Social
• New, often conflicting cultures/ideas
• Crime real or perceived
• Over crowding of roads, services, congestion
• Infringement of privacy
• Un equitable share in benefits
• Environment
• Increased visitor numbers may degrade
  environment- trampling erosion of footpaths,
  habitat loss
• Increased pollution air, noise, litter

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Enquiry Q 4 Management

• Who is the management for
• locals?
• visitors?
• Landowners?
• The flora and fauna and landscapes of the natural
  environment?
• What rights should locals have?
• To what extent should degraded or damaged
  landscapes be restored to original state?
• If restoration is involved is there legislation
  to restore indigenous species? Why?
• Is micro-management the best strategy or a wider
  perspective?
• Is management short or long term?
• Is management reactive or pro-active?
• Are there any conflicts between different
  managers of any site?

• Should rural landscapes be managed?
• Attitudes and conflicts of different managers
• Effectiveness of management strategies

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Carrying capacity management
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Classifying Management actions
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Setting limits of use

• In the 1960s and 1970s managers tried to
  determine an optimum number for sites from
  Yosemite to Stonehenge
• However, it is almost impossible to set a value
• Indeed, creating a specific carrying capacity
  figure may give false impression of security once
  established.
• Latest research focuses on the concept that all
  activities cause impacts and these should be
  limited rather than the pure numbers of people.
• This is called the Limits of Acceptable Change
  (LAC) . It is used to set standards and
  monitoring indicators based on management and
  stakeholder concerns.
• When these standards are not met then managers
  start mitigation to return to an acceptable
  impact.
• By the 1980s in the USA a form of LAC was used
  by about a quarter of all national parks by the
  1980s called The Visitor Experience and Resource
  Protection Process (VERP). This is largely based
  on physical capacity.
• The concept is now used globally by many
  managers.

Yosemite by D. Milton
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The concept of loved to death!

• Tourism and recreation is a powerful tool for
  both local and national economic development
  especially for rural areas with limited
  opportunities .
• This is not just in more developed economies in
  a post productive phase and with a declining
  workforce in agriculture, but also in developing
  economies Peru, Vietnam.
• One of the biggest markets in the future is
  China, with a vast internal market and now post
  Olympics an even bigger growth hot spot for
  foreign travellers.
• This is the fundamental paradox of modern
  tourism sites often have to be protected and
  promoted at the same time hence the term loved
  to death!
• The carrying capacity is often exceeded, hence
  death to aspects of an area from ecosystem
  species to indigenous peoples.(top image is of
  locals near Machu Picchu selling artefacts)
• National parks from Yellowstone, the Lake
  District to Machu Picchu in Peru are classic
  examples.

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Assessing management strategies

• Criteria need to be set up to assess the
  effectiveness of the range of management
  strategies possible
• The sustainability quadrant or 3 pillars of
  sustainability models may help as a framework.

Total protection- may be preservation No public
access. May have scientific research
Wildlife parks reserves May include ecotourism
Extractive reserves
Economic development integrated into conservation
Exploitation may have token protection