WP3

Objectives

This WP focusses on the impact of human activities of different intensity on biodiversity and wilderness values and will form the second focus of PDs 1 and 2. This WP addresses the following questions:

1. Which human activities have the largest impact on biodiversity and wilderness values?
2. What are the impacts of cumulative influences (e.g. repeat visits and impact of aggregated loss by visiting inviolate areas) and are there synergistic effects from multiple different activities on biodiversity and wilderness values?
3. Which monitoring tools are needed to quantify change/pressure in the future?

Methodology

1. PD1 Quantify direct impact of human activities (presence, walking, transportation modes) through field experiments (e.g. Tejedo et al. 2016) and literature (Tuomi et al. 2021) for the different biodiversity indicators, including vegetation, soil and fauna (WP2).
2. PD2 will build on the survey methodology used in Cajiao et al. (2022) to identify motivations of tourists and tour guides to visit new sites, in addition to questions on wilderness value indicators (WP2).
3. PD1 Test the biodiversity indicators (developed in WP2) in the field at sites with different histories and intensity of human visits and compare these to control sites (e.g. ASPAs, which have highly regulated visitation).
4. PD1 Quantify synergistic impacts of human activities (e.g. trampling and pollution) on biodiversity using the indicators developed in WP2.
5. PD1 and PD2. Design and test simple indicators for monitoring, such as repeat photography at start and end of field seasons and UAV monitoring from ships to create easy-to-use methods for national and tourism operators to use in the field.

Productive interactions (co-design and co-creation)

WP3 will greatly depend on and benefit from collaboration with the stakeholders of the tourist industry (IAATO, etc.) to achieve our objectives with regard to visiting regularly visited areas in Antarctica and develop and experiment with different indicators for monitoring. By developing such indicators together with the organizations that are most likely to be using these, we create a strong commitment to achieve our objectives.