Fig 1.
The total footprint of Arctic tourism measured from Flickr data increased between 2004 and 2017 (Uncorrected Arctic footprint, darker blue), even after adjusting for the global rise in Flickr use during this period (Global-bias corrected, green). The relative footprint per tourist (Equal sample size, pale blue) also increased slightly over this time. Similar trends are seen in summer and winter, though the tourism footprint in winter is approximately half the magnitude of that in summer. The footprint is defined as the percentage of 5 km hexagonal grid cells within the Arctic region visited by at least one Flickr user per year. The 2017 decline should be interpreted with caution as it may in part be an artefact of the timing of our data download and the lag between photos being taken and their being uploaded to Flickr.
Fig 2.
Seasonal maps of Arctic tourism (2004–2017) displayed at 10km resolution.
The guide maps (right) are displayed at 100km resolution. Spatial patterns of tourism are strongly governed by air, road and sea access, with few tourists venturing far from populated areas in winter. A photo-unit-day value of 14 corresponds to one Flickr user visiting the cell per year. Country borders are modified from Natural Earth CC PD.
Table 1.
Seasonal variation in Arctic visitation, estimated from Flickr data (2004 to 2017).
Table 2.
Model coefficients for binomial generalized additive models of the effect of accessibility on the tourist footprint in summer and winter in the Arctic.
The intercept represents Norway, unprotected. The protected area term was not included in the winter model.