Wood Develops National Model for Estimating United States Public Land Visitation
Posted: 1/15/2026 (CSDE Research)
CSDE Affiliate Spencer Wood (Principal Research Scientist, eScience Institute) and co-authors built and tested predictive models for estimating recreational visits to parks, open spaces, and other protected lands. The models incorporated multiple sources of digital mobility data including geotagged posts to social media platforms, community science observations, and a mobile device location dataset from a commercial vendor, alongside other covariates. Using observational visitation data series from the United States’ National Park Service, Forest Service, and Fish and Wildlife Service, the authors quantified the accuracy of the predictive models. Accuracy was highest when on-site visitation data was integrated, and when multiple data sources were integrated, as relying solely on mobile phone location data lead to errors in measurement.