PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

More woodlands will not impact tourism

Study shows that more woodlands in upland landscapes will have no or little effect on touris

2023-05-03
(Press-News.org) Hiking, cycling, climbing and boating. When we take time off from work or school, we like to go out into nature. The landscape in other words play an important role for our vacations. To promote biodiversity and carbon sequestration there is a focus on planting more trees, especially in upland areas such as Howgill Fells. The Howgill Fells is located in the north-west of England and is known for its soft, rolling and open landscape.  It is a popular area for tourists seeking the outdoors and hill-walking in particular. But how will it affect tourism, if the area was to be covered with more woodlands? 

"There are many opinions on woodlands in these popular tourist areas, which is why we found this study important to conduct," says Postdoc Sara Vangerschov Iversen from the Department of Agroecology, who has conducted a study on how planting more woodlands affect tourists' desire to visit Howgill Fells, but according to the Postdoc it could have been any upland area in the UK.     

Concerned about income  

The English uplands have largely been defined as “less favoured areas”, because they are areas that are challenged in terms of food production.  Less favoured areas are the EU classification for socially and economically disadvantaged areas.  

"The uplands are used for sheep farming, but this is an industry that is changing and experiences a decline. Therefore, these areas are often perceived to be ideal for woodland creation," says Sara Vangerschov Iversen.   

However, not everyone is happy with the idea of more woodlands. There is concern among local people that more woodlands will mean fewer tourists, and fewer tourists means lower earnings.   

"Farmers in these areas have developed their agricultural business to include not only farming, but also farm shops and B&Bs. In other words, there is a big interest in how many tourists come and visit the area. So, it is also important for those who manage the landscape to understand whether woodland creation negatively affects the people who come and visit," explains Sara Vangerschov Iversen.   

No problem, as long as there is still a view from the top 

Aproximately 500 tourists participated in the study, in which researchers investigated whether more woodlands would play a role in regard to them visiting an area such as Howgill Fells.   

"There are many voices in this debate about more woodlands or not. What we can contribute with here, is more evidence directly from tourists. We have talked to tourists and explored whether woodlands in these areas actually affect their choice of destination," says Sara Vangerschov Iversen.   

In the study, the current state of 1.5% woodland within the Howgill Fells were compared to a number of scenarios for increasing woodlands with 10%, 25%, 50%, 75% or 100%  

"The overall result of our survey is that increasing woodland cover does not affect tourists. The vast majority responded that an increased amount of forest would have no impact on whether they would visit the area. On the other hand, we can see that the number of people who would still visit decreased slightly the more forest was planted, but even at 75% and 100% scenario, still the majority of respondents answered that it makes no difference to them," says Sara Vangerschov Iversen.   

However, the study shows that even though tourists would not mind spending their vacation activities in forests, they still prefer to have a view from the mountain top.  

"It is a fairly small study, we have talked to approx. 500 tourists in a specific location in the UK, but the focus has been on the tourist voices. Locally, of course, it is a very useful result, here is evidence that you can plant woodlands without negatively affecting tourism. It is also a study that is useful in rest of the UK, where there is a focus on woodland creation in similar upland areas. Here is evidence that it will not affect tourism as much as feared," says Sara Vangerschov Iversen. 

More information  

Partners: Department of Agroecology at Aarhus University and University of Cumbria.   

Funding: This study was supported by the Forestry Commission, UK (Grant number CFS 7/16) and the University of Cumbria, UK. The organizations had no role in the design of the study, in data collection and analysis, the decision to publish, or the preparation of the manuscript.  

Conflict of interest: None  

: The publication "Impacts of woodland planting on nature-based recreational tourism in upland Enland - a case study" is published in Landscape and Urban Planning. It is written by Sara Vangerschov Iversen, Naomi van der Velden, Ian Convery, Lois Mansfield, Chris Kjeldsen, Martin Hvarregaard Thorsøe and Claire D.S. Holt.   

Contact: Postdoc Sara Vangerschov Iversen, Department of Agroecology, Aarhus University. Email: sara.iversen@agro.au.dk      

END


ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Used coffee pods can be recycled to produce filaments for 3D printing

Used coffee pods can be recycled to produce filaments for 3D printing
2023-05-03
An article published in the journal ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering brings good news for coffee buffs: the plastic in used coffee pods can be recycled to make filament for 3D printers, minimizing its environmental impact. The solution was successfully tested by research groups in Brazil at the Federal University of São Carlos (USFCar) and the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), and in the United Kingdom at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU). “We produced new conductive and non-conductive filaments from waste polylactic acid [PLA] from used coffee machine ...

American Stroke Association names 2023 Stroke Heroes

2023-05-03
DALLAS, May 3, 2023 — Six local stroke heroes from across the country are being recognized by the American Stroke Association, a division of the American Heart Association, for their resiliency and dedication to rise up against stroke. Approximately 800,000 Americans have a stroke each year,[1] a leading cause of disability in the U.S., and one in four survivors will have another one. The American Stroke Association’s annual Stroke Hero Awards honors stroke survivors, health care professionals and family caregivers. The ...

SwRI designs safer, more effective hydrogen injector for gas turbines

SwRI designs safer, more effective hydrogen injector for gas turbines
2023-05-03
SAN ANTONIO — May 3, 2023 —Southwest Research Institute is designing innovative hydrogen combustion systems for gas turbines used in power generation. The designs prevent flashback, a common concern in hydrogen-fueled combustion systems wherein the flame from the combustor travels into the nozzle, which can result in damaged equipment. Hydrogen fuel has numerous benefits including the fact that it produces no carbon emissions during the combustion process. However, one of the things that is especially challenging is that it’s highly reactive, which makes it more difficult to work with than natural gas or the liquid fuels ...

Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology researchers enhance thermoelectricity with guided impurity position control

Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology researchers enhance thermoelectricity with guided impurity position control
2023-05-03
Thermoelectric materials, substances that convert temperature difference into electricity, find a multitude of applications involving the conversion of waste heat into useful electrical energy. However, they often need to rely on heavy rare earth elements for efficient thermoelectric conversion. This, unfortunately, makes them expensive and environmentally hazardous. In recent years, conjugated polymer-based material has received attention as an environmentally benign alternative to the conventional rare earth metal-based thermoelectric materials. Owing to their high ...

High-throughput experiments might ensure a better diagnosis of hereditary diseases

2023-05-03
Researchers at the Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen, have now contributed to solving this problem for a specific gene called GCK. The study has just been published in Genome Biology. Figure: GCK gene   Rasmus Hartmann-Petersen, Professor at the Department of Biology, explains: - “The GCK gene, which codes for the enzyme glucokinase, regulates the secretion of insulin in the pancreas. GCK gene variants can therefore cause a form of hereditary diabetes. ...

Study finds fluorescent guide can help detect tumor left behind after breast cancer surgery

Study finds fluorescent guide can help detect tumor left behind after breast cancer surgery
2023-05-03
A new technique designed to allow surgeons to identify and remove residual tumor tissue during breast-conserving surgery showed promising results in a multi-center trial led by investigators from the Mass General Cancer Center, a member of Mass General Brigham. The clinical trial, which was funded in part by Lumicell, Inc., evaluated Lumicell’s investigational optical imaging agent pegulicianine in fluorescence-guided surgery (pFGS). In pFGS, pegulicianine is activated to a fluorescent form at sites of residual tumor, allowing surgeons to identify tumor remaining in the surgical site during breast cancer surgery. Investigators found that ...

Eric and Wendy Schmidt announce the 2023 Schmidt Science Fellows

Eric and Wendy Schmidt announce the 2023 Schmidt Science Fellows
2023-05-03
New York, NY, 3 May 2023 - Today, Eric and Wendy Schmidt announced the members of the 2023 cohort of Schmidt Science Fellows. The 32 exceptional early career scientists will receive support to develop research projects and the leadership skills necessary to harness interdisciplinary science to tackle some of the world’s most intractable problems. Schmidt Science Fellows is the inaugural program of Schmidt Futures, the philanthropic initiative of Eric and Wendy Schmidt with a mission to find and connect talented people to solve our world’s hardest ...

How to protect consumers from deceptive comparison pricing

2023-05-03
Researchers from Duke University, University of Notre Dame, and Microsoft published a new Journal of Marketing article that examines using “true normal prices” during a sale as a way to reduce deceptive pricing tricks. The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, is titled “Competition and the Regulation of Fictitious Pricing” and is authored by Richard Staelin, Joel E. Urbany, and Donald Ngwe. Does competition make firms more honest? Over 50 years ago, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) assumed the answer was yes when it stopped enforcing ...

Astronomers find distant gas clouds with leftovers of the first stars

Astronomers find distant gas clouds with leftovers of the first stars
2023-05-03
Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), researchers have found for the first time the fingerprints left by the explosion of the first stars in the Universe. They detected three distant gas clouds whose chemical composition matches what we expect from the first stellar explosions. These findings bring us one step closer to understanding the nature of the first stars that formed after the Big Bang. “For the first time ever, we were able to identify the chemical traces of the explosions of the first stars in very distant ...

Sleep phase can reduce anxiety in people with PTSD

2023-05-03
A new study shows that sleep spindles, brief bursts of brain activity occurring during one phase of sleep and captured by EEG, may regulate anxiety in people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The study shines a light on the role of spindles in alleviating anxiety in PTSD as well as confirms their established role in the transfer of new information to longer-term memory storage. The findings challenge recent work by other researchers that has indicated spindles may heighten intrusive and violent thoughts in people with PTSD. The final draft of the preprint publishes in Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging on ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

New partnerships to provide travel grants, coursework in genomic approaches to infectious disease for underrepresented aspiring physicians

Off the clothesline, on the grid: MXene nanomaterials enable wireless charging in textiles

How COVID-19 transformed family dinners

New ESO image captures a dark wolf in the sky

New research reveals delayed evolutionary origin of Asteriidae sea stars

A paper-aluminum combo for strong, sustainable packaging

A novel neural network for preserving cultural heritage via 3D image reconstruction

Sleep apnea contributes to dementia in older adults, especially women

The silk thread that can turn clothes into charging stations

Glaucoma drug shows promise against neurodegenerative diseases, animal studies suggest

Human proteins identified that explain inter-individual differences in functional brain connectivity

A newly developed algorithm shows how a gene is expressed at microscopic resolution

Why elephants never forget but fleas have, well, the attention span of a flea

Childhood neglect associated with stroke, COPD, cognitive impairment, and depression

Landmark 20-year study of climate change impact on permafrost forests

Researchers take broadband high-resolution frequency combs into the UV

Not going out is the “new normal” post-Covid, say experts

Study shows broader screening methods help prevent spread of dangerous fungal pathogen in hospitals

Research spotlight: Testing a model for depression care in Malawi using existing medical infrastructure

Depression care in low-income nations can improve overall health

The BMJ investigates dispute over US group’s involvement in WHO’s trans health guideline

Personal info and privacy control may be key to better visits with AI doctors

NIH study demonstrates long-term benefits of weight-loss surgery in young people

Sustained remission of diabetes and other obesity-related conditions found a decade after weight loss surgery in adolescence

Low-level lead poisoning is still pervasive in the US and globally

How researchers can maximize biological insights using animal-tracking devices

Research shows new method helps doctors safely remove dangerous heart infections without surgery

Rapid horizontal eye movement can improve stability in people with Parkinson’s

Study finds COVID-19 pandemic worsened patient safety measures

Costs still on the rise for drugs for neurological diseases

[Press-News.org] More woodlands will not impact tourism
Study shows that more woodlands in upland landscapes will have no or little effect on touris