The Relationship between Habitat Diversity and Tourists’ Visual Preference in Urban Wetland Park

Abstract

The increasing number of visitors to wetland parks has caused varying degrees of impact on wetland life. How to reduce the damage to wetland biodiversity caused by recreational activities in parks, improve tourists’ recreational experience, and balance the relationship between the two are urgent problems that need to be solved. Therefore, four urban wetland parks were selected as subjects for this study. The present study utilized social media data to study the diversity of urban wetland habitats and tourists’ wetland landscape preferences from the spatial dimension and explore the relationship between the two. This is a practice different from the traditional ecological research (survey, measurement, monitoring, questionnaire survey) of wetland habitat diversity assessment. The research revealed the following findings: (1) There was a significant positive correlation between habitat saturation and positive artificial elements, such as landscape structures and aerial walkways; (2) Landscape complexity is negatively correlated with landscape instantaneity and wilderness degree; (3) Habitat diversity was negatively correlated with landscape instantaneity but positively correlated with naturalness and positive artificial elements. This study proposes wetland habitat construction as a strategy to optimize the management of habitat diversity in urban wetland parks and enhance its ecological education function.

Analyzing the Worldwide Wetland Parks Research: A Spectral-Cluster Algorithm Latent Semantic Index Approach

“…Furthermore, the rational utilization of resources can improve the income of local surrounding communities and increase funding sources for wetland protection [27,28]. Such rational utilization can also change the ideological concepts of a community and encourage people to protect wetlands [29] spontaneously.…”

“…First, from the perspective of landscape science, research mainly involves the current development and restoration of wetland parks [38], planning and design [35], plant configuration design [34], et cetera. Second, the sociological perspective includes research on wetland value [37], wetland healthcare [3], and the ecological education function of wetland parks [29]. Mitsch, Zhang, Griffiths, and Bays [17] reported that these parks serve as natural laboratories for studying biodiversity and ecosystem function, promoting scientific research that leads to a deep understanding of wetland ecosystems.…”

“…(3) The increase in the number of tourists visiting wetland parks has caused different levelss of impact on wetland life. Balancing the relationship between the ecosystem and tourists is essential to reduce the damage resulting from park leisure activities on wetland biodiversity and improve the leisure experience of tourists [29]. The government and managers can help residents participate in the protection and construction of wetland parks through publicity and education, establishing a comprehensive legislation and supervision system, clarifying the management and ownership of wetlands, and standardization of the wetland development process.…”