Arctic tourism has rapidly increased in the past two decades. We used social media data to examine localized tourism booms and quantify the spatial expansion of the Arctic tourism footprint. We extracted geotagged locations from over 800,000 photos on Flickr and mapped these across space and time. We critically examine the use of social media as a data source in data-poor regions, and find that while ...

Digital technologies, including participatory Internet mapping, social media and smartphones, provide new avenues for research in outdoor recreation and tourism. The potential to reach a greater audience and collect visitation data on a broader scale, with less costs than traditional paper surveys, are key advantages that have increased the use of these novel technologies. Using of mobile apps for ...

Understanding the effects of human exploitation on the genetic composition of wild populations is important for predicting species persistence and adaptive potential. We therefore investigated the genetic legacy of large-scale commercial harvesting by reconstructing, on a global scale, the recent demographic history of the Antarctic fur seal (Arctocephalus gazella), a species that was hunted to the ...

Nature-based tourism is increasingly encouraged to support local socioeconomic development in and around protected areas, but managing protected areas for tourism could challenge existing park uses associated with self-organized outdoor recreation and local resource use. We used a web-based Public Participatory Geographic Information System (PPGIS) to identify the most important places and values ...

The ecosystem role of Arctic microbial communities is still largely unknown. Based on a time-series study at the IsA station (West Spitsbergen), the seasonality and contribution of pelagic protists to the vertical flux was investigated at 7 time points during 2011-2012. The hydrography of this high-Arctic fjord was evaluated to identify impacts on the community composition during the different ...

Land cover maps are the basic data layer required for understanding and modeling ecological patterns and processes. The Circumpolar Arctic Vegetation Map (CAVM), produced in 2003, has been widely used as a base map for studies in the arctic tundra biome. However, the relatively coarse resolution and vector format of the map were not compatible with many other data sets. We present a new version of ...

A conspicuous season–diversity relationship (SDR) can be seen in seasonal environments, often with a defined peak in active species diversity in the growing season. We ask is this a general pattern and are other patterns possible? In addition, we ask what is the ultimate cause of this pattern and can we understand it using existing ecological theory? To accomplish this task, we assembled a global ...

Increasing atmospheric methane concentrations contribute significantly to global warming. The only known biological sink for atmospheric methane is oxidation by methane oxidizing bacteria (MOB). Due to the lack of pure cultures, the physiology and metabolic potential of MOB that oxidize atmospheric methane remains a mystery. Here, we report on isolation and characterization of a MOB that can grow ...

The year‐round thermal habitat at sea for adult Atlantic salmon <i>Salmo salar</i> (<i>n</i> = 49) from northern Norway was investigated using archival tags over a 10 year study period. During their ocean feeding migration, the fish spent 90% of the time in waters with temperatures from 1.6–8.4°C. Daily mean temperatures ranged from −0.5 to 12.9°C, with daily temperature variation up to 9.6°C. Fish ...