“Locals” and “Tourists” on iNaturalist is a data visualization project created by @loganw in 2023 which some of you may find interesting. It aims to explore where people go to observe nature and whether differences exist among “locals” and “tourists” in terms of places they visit or the taxa they’re interested in.
Some background. I’ve always been fascinated about the potential of using iNat data to understand where citizen science activity is growing and whether growth is driven by local community engagement, by ecotourism, or by some other factors. A conversation inspired by Erica Fischer’s 2010 work, sparked enough interest in Logan to create this stunning visualization which allows to explore a range of questions through an interactive map:
Where are birders most active? Where do locals go to observe plants or mushrooms?
Is the herper community particularly active in certain regions?
Are there tourist attractions and destinations that attract incidental iNat observations?
Are there regions and countries where observations are primarily driven by the local population or by an influx of visitors?
We’d love to hear any insights or fun discoveries you can make exploring these maps. Note that the data used in this project is based on a snapshot from iNat from 2023 and hasn’t been recently updated. Understanding where the biggest differences over time are would be another very intriguing question to explore…Edited: The data has just been refreshed and the interface allows you to compare different snapshots of the data. Thanks, @loganw!
iNat activity in the Amalfi Coast is disproportionately driven by tourists / visitors whereas the Ionian Coast of Puglia has a lot of observations almost uniquely by locals.
Tassie has far more tourists doing observations than locals. In Vic it’s the locals, but tourists mainly observe coastal areas. Actually I am quite surprised by Canberra, the purple blob in the top right. I would have thought the tourists would win there. There must be some very active locals.
I haven’t looked up how the geographic scale of “local” was defined for this, which might make a large difference - rural folks tend to drive further on a daily basis than urbanites, so that may be a bias. (For example, I’d define my “local” area for iNat purposes to cover about a 100-mile radius around Bend, Oregon, the orange blob in the center of the image.) The large urban areas form a North-South string on the west side of the state. Those urbanites tend to vacation either west along the mostly rural coast, or east in the very rural mountains and deserts, and the data here mostly reflect that pattern. (Challenge: can you identify the state’s single National Park in this image? [answer below]). I guess it’s pretty inevitable that the active local observer communities in rural areas are swamped by tourist observations. This map represents typical tourism patterns in the state, except possibly for the small diffuse orange patches in the eastern part of the state. These may represent “iNat tourists” who are specifically looking for remote areas with few observations, or they may be people who consider themselves local, but travel far to visit areas that are not tourist-laden.
(Answer to challenge: Crater Lake National Park, the circular intense orange blob a bit north of Klamath Falls. There are very few locals in that area.)
Interesting. In New Zealand the locals make up most the observations around the major population centres but the tourists are the ones observing in the more remote areas
My local area is mostly locals, though I will admit, I’m a bit sad that none of my obs are on there lol. I think this is a really sick project, I love being able to look around the map and see where things are more one or the other, or more even
I wonder what the cutoff date is, since starting in summer 2024 to summer 2025 I am overwhelmingly the #1 observer in eastern Iowa, yet Coralville is orange.
I expect that it’s because the definition of “local” doesn’t cover more than a few dozen km or something like that. Not many people live on Stewart Island, or in Fiordland, or Arthur’s Pass, Tongariro, etc. So the overwhelming majority of people making observations in those areas will be counted as tourists, despite being from nearby in Aotearoa.
If you read the linked article, it is about the number of days doing observations in that place. More than 90 days is considered local, less is a tourist.
Yes, I did read that, but if you read my comment, you’ll see I’m talking about what the geographic definition of “that place” is (as you refer to it).
It could be that the entire country is considered “that place”, or that a 10km radius of the specific observation GPS coordinates is considered “that place”.
It is my assumption that it’s likely closer to “that place” being defined as a 10km radius around the specific location. This means that if someone lives in Invercargill and boats over to Stewart Island, they would not be considered a local, despite living relatively nearby, or someone who lives in Queenstown, but who goes to Fiordland, would not be considered a local, despite living somewhat close by.
Or perhaps it’s closer to a 100km radius, in which case someone visiting Stewart Island from Dunedin would not be considered a local, while someone from Invercargill would be. Etc.
I cranked the threshhold up all the way to 365 days before looking at my local area. I’ve been clicking on observations by “locals” and see what they really are are people who come back to visit the same place year after year. I did notice that the “tourists” mostly had observations from the most popular trails while “locals” (i.e. regulars) also observe on less popular trails, roadsides, and by following old logging roads, creeks, and pipeline/powerline ROWs that pass through the preserves.
Good point, it would be helpful to know the geographic threshold which one is considered a local. If it’s a relatively small radius the reason for more “tourists” in remote areas would be obvious.
Per the blogpost the places are size 3 H3 tiles, to view them zoom in here until it says “current resolution: 3”. If the timespan between an observers’ first and last observation in a given cell was at least 90 days, then all their observations in that cell would be marked as “local”, otherwise “tourist”.
Regarding this Stewart Island (except for the Southern third or so) is in the same cell as Invercargill so you would be considered a local there no matter what. You’re right that Fiordland is not the same area as Queenstown, but as long as your first visit and last visit were at least 3 months apart you’d still be considered a local there.
It’s definitely not a perfect system but it seems to produce pretty plausible results, and I think a lot of stuff about that isn’t quite as bad as it seems at first blush (e.g. you might be concerned about what happens if someone lives near the border of one of these cells, but as long as they regularly visit both sides they’ll be considered a local to both, so that seems fine for instance).
I found this absolutely fascinating! I’m travelling at the moment, so I’ve bookmarked the map and will be going back to study it in more depth when I have more time. I’m happy to see that in central Italy where I live most of the observing is being done by locals. Gives a nice feel of continuity somehow.
