Individuals, communities, and societies ascribe a diverse array of values to landscapes. These values are shaped by the aesthetic, cultural, and recreational benefits and services provided by those landscapes. However, across the globe, processes such as urbanization, agricultural intensification, and abandonment are threatening landscape integrity, altering the personally meaningful connections people have toward specific places. Existing methods used to study landscape values, such as social surveys, are poorly suited to capture dynamic landscape-scale processes across large geographic extents. Social media data, by comparison, can be used to indirectly measure and identify valuable features of landscapes at a regional, continental, and perhaps even worldwide scale. We evaluate the usefulness of different social media platformsPanoramio, Flickr, and Instagram-and quantify landscape values at a continental scale. We find Panoramio, Flickr, and Instagram data can be used to quantify landscape values, with features of Instagram being especially suitable due to its relatively large population of users and its functional ability of allowing users to attach personally meaningful comments and hashtags to their uploaded images. Although Panoramio, Flickr, and Instagram have different user profiles, our analysis revealed similar patterns of landscape values across Europe across the three platforms. We also found variables describing accessibility, population density, income, mountainous terrain, or proximity to water explained a significant portion of observed variation across data from the different platforms. Social media data can be used to extend our understanding of how and where individuals ascribe value to landscapes across diverse social, political, and ecological boundaries.cross-cultural analysis | volunteered geolocated content | outdoor recreation and leisure | cultural ecosystem services | European landscape

We hypothesize and test a positive relationship between the extent to which local community members trust a management agency and their willingness to engage in resource-related public discourse and involvement. We employ a multilevel generalized mixed model to analyze data collected from five different samples of residents living near managed resource areas. Counter to our proposed hypotheses, results suggest individuals' level of dispositional trust, their belief that management shares similar values as them, and their trust in the moral competency of the management agency were all found to be significantly and negatively related to public involvement in resource-related activities. These findings suggest that the central role of building trust among local constituents within many planning frameworks needs to be reconsidered with consideration given to both the needs of individuals who trust an agency and the desires of distrusting individuals who are more likely to become involved in public involvement efforts.

This research analyzes individuals' perceived resilience to changing climatic conditions. Specifically, we suggest individual resilience is composed of an awareness of localized risks created because of climate change, a willingness to learn about, and plan for, the potential impacts of altered environmental conditions, and general appraisals of personal adaptive capacities. We hypothesize that resilience is influenced by the characteristics of individuals' social networks and also by their social‐psychological dependence on local environments. Using data collected in three resource‐associated communities within the southeastern United States, our analysis suggests bonding ties may limit individuals' willingness to seek new information about the potential impacts of climate change. Conversely, the data suggest the use of a diverse array of bridging ties is positively associated with information‐seeking behavior. The data also support our hypothesis that individuals' social psychological dependencies on the local environment influences their perceived resilience to changing climatic conditions. By gaining a clearer understanding of how individuals' social networks and social‐psychological dependencies affect their perceived ability to adapt to changing environmental conditions, decision makers can focus on policy solutions that increase adaptive capacities and build social resilience.

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Immersive virtual environment (IVE) technology offers a wide range of potential benefits to research focused on understanding how individuals perceive and respond to built and natural environments. In an effort to broaden awareness and use of IVE technology in perception, preference and behavior research, this review paper describes how IVE technology can be used to complement more traditional methods commonly applied in public health research. The paper also describes a relatively simple workflow for creating and displaying 360° virtual environments of built and natural settings and presents two freely-available and customizable applications that scientists from a variety of disciplines, including public health, can use to advance their research into human preferences, perceptions and behaviors related to built and natural settings.