Estimating Trail Use and Visitor Spatial Distribution Using Mobile Device Data: An Example From the Nature Reserve of Orange County, California USA

Monitoring visitor use in parks and protected areas (PPAs) provides essential information for managers of PPAs to evaluate aspects of the visitor experience and balance the ecological disturbance that use creates. Traditional methods for quantifying visitation and spatial use of PPAs are resource intensive and thus are conducted infrequently or at cost-effective intervals which may fail to capture the dynamic nature of modern visitor use trends. This paper provides an addition to a growing literature using mobile-device data to quantify visitation and spatial density of use of urban-proximate PPAs in Orange County, California, USA using the analysis platform Streetlight, Inc. The results of our analysis compared favorably with well-established automatic trail counting and GPS-based monitoring methods, and illustrate several advantages of mobile device data to inform the management of PPAs. Mobile device data provide reliable estimates of visitation and spatial density of use and can augment and compliment existing social and resource monitoring for PPA management and planning

Assessing Effectiveness of Management Actions on Recovery of CSS Plant Communities Over-Time Final Report

Historically, over 4,000 acres of the Orange County Central & Coastal Sub region NCCP/HCP Reserve System have been invaded by a number of exotic plant species including several annual grasses, artichoke thistle (Cynara cardunculus, CYCA), mustards and other exotic forbs. Invasion has resulted in displacement of many desirable plant species and overall degradation of the reserve’s target plant community, coastal sage scrub. To control the spread of CYCA, the Nature Reserve of Orange County (NROC) established a management program involving spot application of herbicide (Fusillade and Round-up) to individual plants. Since 1994, thousands of acres have been treated annually. Additionally, NROC has chemically and mechanically managed other exotic, invasive species such as Ricinus communis (castor bean) and Nicotiana glauca (tree tobacco). While these weed control efforts reduce target invasive species, whether the native plant community is recovering is not necessarily clear, nor is the long-term sustainability of control efforts. Following degradation, recovery of a native system rarely follows the reverse path of degradation (Fig. 1). Instead alternative paths that may or may not have a trajectory towards the original or goal state can occur (Bradshaw; Cramer et al 2008). In highly degraded areas, sites may become stuck in an alternative or novel state. These novel or alternative trajectories and states play a key role in recovery and restoration and may be dependent on management action. A common example of this is the replacement of a targeted exotic species by a new exotic following control of the original target exotic (Denslow & D’Anonio 2005; Flory & Clay 2009). Within the NROC community, there has been concern that such a replacement occurred following the long-term CYCA removal program such that Brassica nigra (black mustard, BRNI) replaced CYCA. Assessing recovery after control measures is a powerful tool to aid in restoration decision-making and ultimately guiding future management actions for the reserve system.  Goals and Objectives:  Our objectives were to address a number of critical issues relevant to restoration planning at NROC, including:  Task 1: Provide an updated description of the vegetation community at 109 sites within the Reserve System previously sampled in 1998, 2007 and 2008.  Task 2: Teasing apart trends due to management efforts from other trends due to environment or land use change (e.g., grazing cessation in the early 1990s).  Task 3: Determining thresholds in both native and weed species abundance that will allow for further unassisted recovery.  Task 4: Identifying areas where sites are “stuck” (i.e., not recovering) and need additional intervention (e.g., seeding, mowing, soil amendments). By capitalizing on past vegetation monitoring and additional analysis of monitoring data, we hoped to reveal the mechanisms underlying the complex dynamics of vegetation recovery over time and inform restoration decision-making within the NCCP/HCP Reserve System. Project Start Date: April 1, 2013Project Completion Date: December 31, 2014Contracted Organization: University of California, Berkele

The Intersection of Human Disturbance and Diel Activity, with Potential Consequences on Trophic Interactions.

Direct effects of human disturbance on animal populations are well documented across habitats, biomes, and species, but indirect effects of diel have received less attention. An emerging field in applied ecology involves behavioral avoidance of or attraction to humans and their trappings. We posit trophic consequences, in terms of relative risk, for four species of mammals, each of which strongly avoids human activity, in urban reserves of coastal southern California. Two species, one predator and one prey, avoid human activity via a temporal shift to become "more nocturnal"-the species' activity is centered near dawn on days without human activity but nearer to midnight on days with human activity. Diel shifts have brought the species into greater overlap, respectively, with a key prey and a key predator, overlap that may increase encounter rate and thus increase relative risk of predation, with potential consequences for trophic dynamics and cascades: increased risk of predation may depress prey population, either directly (e.g., mortality) or indirectly (e.g., "landscape of fear"). Human use of reserves, especially in high population density regions, needs to be reconsidered either to reduce access or to restrict access entirely to areas that may provide refuge to both predators and prey

Using Mobile Device Data to Estimate Visitation in Parks and Protected Areas: An Example from the Nature Reserve of Orange County, California

Measuring and monitoring use levels in parks and protected areas (PPAs) remains an ongoing challenge for managers worldwide. Understanding visitation levels is particularly important as contemporary use trends in PPAs have become increasingly dynamic due to many factors that influence demand, including for example, the popularizing of locations via social media. In this paper, we present a novel, mobile device data analysis approach for understanding use levels in PPAs, measured as vehicle arrivals to formal and informal park entrances. We initiated this research in effort to develop an alternative use estimation technique, particularly in situations where visitors may enter a PPA in a more diffuse manner, via informal entrance locations that are difficult to monitor by conventional direct counting methods. Our approach uses a readily available mobile data analysis platform, Streetlight InSight®, developed for transportation planners that is capable of accessing and processing a vast resource of mobile device data. We tested this approach in a network of urban-proximate PPAs in Orange County, California, via both currently available data processing procedures, and sampling and calibration techniques we developed. Our results compare favorably to available use estimates in the study area that employ standard counting techniques. For example, we statistically compared monthly estimates calculated via the Streetlight model and direct counts at a popular entrance location and found no significant difference. We also examined a time period of a known park closure due to a forest fire event to determine if erroneous data were being collected and estimated use at or near zero. Although our method verification relies mainly on face validity due to limited availability of other use estimates in our study location, our results suggest that acceptable use estimates can be obtained in a wide range of PPA applications. This approach has several substantial advantages to PPA management. First, since mobile data are available, managers can obtain current use level estimates in PPAs with a significantly reduced need for field devices and field staff time and effort. Second, retrospective data back to 2014 are available, making it possible to examine trends over the last several years even if no on-site counts were ever obtained. Last, parks with multiple, diffuse entry locations can be assessed more comprehensively, since locations can be identified and use estimated via a digital mapbased interface

Effects of urbanization and habitat composition on site occupancy of two snake species using regional monitoring data from southern California

Detection data from a regional, reptile-monitoring program conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey were analyzed to understand the effects of urbanization and habitat composition on site occupancy of the coachwhip (Masticophis flagellum) and striped racer (M. lateralis) in coastal southern California. Likelihood-based occupancy models indicated striped racers responded to habitat composition, favoring scrub-dominated sites. Coachwhips also responded to habitat composition, favoring open habitats. However, unlike racers, coachwhip spatial population dynamics were strongly associated with the fragmentation and isolation of natural areas caused by urbanization. The odds of coachwhips occupying a site were 64 times greater in large connected areas than the most urbanized and fragmented sites. For coachwhips within urbanized and fragmented sites, the odds of extinction were 10 times greater and odds of colonization were five times lower than in large connected sites. Observed differences between the species in habitat use and specificity are supported by telemetry studies and corroborate existing knowledge of historical patterns of occurrence within the region. Movement data on the coachwhip and striped racer indicate the coachwhip is a wider-ranging species with a greater propensity to encounter roads and other edge environments. Collectively, the results suggest there is widespread loss of the coachwhip from the region, and that long-term persistence of remaining populations is dependent on metapopulation dynamics. The substantially different response of the two species to land-use change serves as a caution against the casual use of closely related species as surrogates in the development of species-specific conservation plans. Keywords: Connectivity, Extinction, Habitat fragmentation, Isolation, Masticophis flagellum, Masticophis fuliginosus, Masticophis lateralis, Occupanc