This research note describes the methodological and practical applications of using smartphone GPS tracking (SGT) to explore the spatial distribution and density of recreational movement in multiple-use urban forests. We present findings from the pilot phase of an ongoing case study in Keskuspuisto (Central park), Helsinki, Finland. The study employs an

The COVID-19 pandemic has encouraged a deeper exploration about how people deal with crisis. This paper presents one of the first pre- and during-pandemic assessments of urban green infrastructure (UGI) use across the same individuals with the aim of better understanding how people's use of different types of urban green and blue spaces changed during the pandemic. A baseline Public Participation GIS survey (N = 1,583 respondents) conducted in August 2018 was followed up in May 2020 (N = 418 identical respondents) during the COVID-19 pandemic in Helsinki, Finland. We found that residents were more likely to visit UGI closer to their home during the pandemic compared with before the pandemic. Patterns of use of UGI were associated with the quality of residential green areas, for example, people sought out forests nearby one's domicile and tended to avoid parks and recreation areas in order to escape the pressures of lockdown, socially distance and avoid overcrowding. However, spatial cluster analyses also revealed that the places mapped by intensive users of natural recreational areas and more outdoor oriented users became more dispersed during the pandemic, suggesting their active search for new types of UGI, including use of agricultural land and residential areas with high tree density cover. Our results further highlighted that some types of UGI such as more distant natural and semi-natural areas and blue spaces serve as critical infrastructure both before and during the pandemic. Natural and semi-natural areas experienced very little change in use. The presented results have implications for how planners design and manage green spaces to enable residents to cope with crises like pandemics into the future.

Planning and management needs up-to-date, easily-obtainable and accurate information on the spatial and social aspects of visitor behaviour in order to balance human use and impacts, and protection of natural resources in public parks. We used a web-based public participation GIS (PPGIS) approach to gather citizen data on visitor behaviour in Helsinki's Central Park in order to aid collaborative spatial decision-making. The study combined smartphone GPS tracking, route drawing and a questionnaire to examine differences between user groups in their use of formal trails, off-trail behaviour and the motivations that affect it. In our sample (n = 233), different activity types were associated with distinctive spatial patterns and potential extent of impacts. The density mapping and statistical analyses indicated three types of behaviour: predominantly on or close to formal trails (runners and cyclists), spatially concentrated off-trail behaviour confined to a few informal paths (mountain bikers), and dispersed off-trail use pattern (walkers and dog walkers). Across all user groups, off-trail behaviour was mainly motivated by positive attraction towards the environment such as scenic view, exploration, and viewing flora and fauna. Study findings lead to several management recommendations that were presented to city officials. These include reducing dispersion and the spatial extent of trampling impacts by encouraging use of a limited number of well-established informal paths away from sensitive vegetation and protected habitats.

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Cities and urban green areas therein can be considered as complex social-ecological systems that provide various ecosystem services with different synergies and trade-offs among them. In this article, we show that multiple stakeholder perspectives and data sources should be used to capture key values for sustainable planning and management of urban green spaces. Using an urban forest in Helsinki, Finland as a case study, we incorporated data collected using public participation GIS, expert elicitation and forest inventories in order to investigate the guidance that the different types of data, and their integration, can provide for landscape planning. We examined the relationship and spatial concurrence between two social variables i.e. visitors’ perceived landscape values and green space use, and two ecological variables i.e. forest habitat quality and urban biodiversity, using hot/coldspot analysis. We found weak correlations and low mean spatial coincidence between the social and ecological data, indicating great complementary importance to multi-criteria decision-making. In addition, there was a higher level of spatial agreement between the ecological datasets than between the social datasets. Forest habitat quality and urban biodiversity were positively correlated and spatially coincided moderately, while we found a negative correlation and very low overlap between visitor use and landscape values. This highlights the conceptual and spatial distinction between the general preferences and values citizens assign to public green spaces and the realized everyday use of these areas and their services. The resulting maps can inform planners on overall social and environmental quality of the landscape, and point out potential threats to areas of high ecological value due to intensive recreational use, which is crucial information for natural resource management. In the end, we discuss different strategies for managing overlaps and discrepancies between the social and ecological values.