Urbanization in the past 20 years, as fragmentation is one of the greatest threats to biodiversity. The map on the left shows areas converted from any land cover type to developed. The map on the right shows geo-statistical “hotspots” of those areas developed in the region. Maps provided by Charlie Mix. Source: National Land Cover Dataset and the UTC IGTLab.
The average local outdoor Chattanooga tourist spends $315 a day, injecting money directly into the economy, according to award-winning research by a team of University of Tennessee at Chattanooga faculty and staff in outdoor recreation, conservation and public health.
The research made the case for the hidden economic values of ecosystem services, tourism and public health adding up to hundreds of millions of dollars annually, while taking second place in an international competition organized by an established geographic information system software company.
“People, Planet, & Profits: The triple bottom line of outdoor recreation, conservation, and public health for the Chattanooga, Tennessee region” is the title of the collaboration among Charlie Mix and Nyssa Hunt in the UTC Interdisciplinary Geospatial Technology Lab, UC Foundation Associate Professor Andrew Bailey (Health and Human Performance) and Guerry Professor Emeritus Gregory Heath (Master of Public Health), placed second in the “Spatial Analysis using ArcGIS StoryMaps” category at the 2022 Esri User Conference Map Gallery.
Their award-winning entry now has a ribbon icon signifying the status.
“It was definitely a surprise and definitely humbling to be recognized,” said Mix, GIS director for UTC and the IGTLab.
In his role, he oversees GIS project development and management; spatial data analysis; modeling; cartography; GIS application development; partnership coordination; and GIS software, hardware and data management.
“The Esri UC is the largest GIS conference in the world,” Mix explained. “This year, it was smaller than usual, but there were still 15,000 people there from all over the world, and they said they had 100,000 logged on virtually.
“This shows just how relevant the work is on a global stage.”
Mix noted that the year-long project, with Bailey as the principal investigator, was funded by a SimCenter: Center of Excellence in Applied Computational Science and Engineering CEACSE grant.
To develop a baseline and trajectory of how outdoor recreation impacts the Chattanooga region, the map project brought together members of the UTC recreation and tourism faculty (Bailey), conservation (Mix and Hunt) and public health (Heath) to show the importance of parks and public lands.
“Dr. Bailey was the one that pitched this idea of trying to kind of quantify protected areas in terms of the hidden cost for protected lands and parks,” Mix said.
Using GIS and cellular tracking data, 168 green spaces were evaluated for visitor and tourism benefits, preventive health care expenses related to park acreage and preventative environmental mitigation costs.
The information gathered will support regional planning that promotes strategic, sustainable development; enhances public health and the regional economy; and protects the green spaces.
“We all know parks and natural areas provide a lot of benefits,” Mix said, “but to me, the biggest surprise was the monetary value calculated by Dr. Heath and Dr. Bailey.
“Just seeing the sheer scope of how far people come to the region to experience our parks and public lands and being able to visualize that to me was very powerful and surprising.”
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Esri, an international supplier of geographic information system software, web GIS and geodatabase management applications, held its annual user conference July 11-15. Headquartered in Redlands, California, the company was founded as the Environmental Systems Research Institute in 1969.
According to the company’s website, Map Gallery Awards are central to the conference because Esri has one of the most comprehensive collections of GIS work in the world, showcasing trends and shifts in technical and cartographic practice.
The complete list of submissions to the Esri UC map gallery by UTC students and staff:
Students
- Will Stuart: The City of Chattanooga’s Urban Forest Canopy
- Matthew Mollica & Connor Firat: New Protected Areas for 2021: A spatial analysis of protected areas in the Chattanooga, Tennessee Region
- Connor Firat: Cherokee National Forest Road Digitizing using Lidar
Staff/Faculty
- Nyssa Hunt: The Cradle of Southern Appalachia: Digging into our Agriculture
- Charlie Mix: The Trans-Lookout Route: A multi-use route connecting Chattanooga, Tennessee to Cloudland Canyon State Park
- Charlie Mix, Nyssa Hunt, Dr. Andrew Bailey, Dr. Greg Heath: People, Planet, & Profits: The triple bottom line of outdoor recreation, conservation, and public health for the Chattanooga, Tennessee region
This map shows where people came from, where there went, how many people, and how much time they spent there, via anonymous cell phone data. Map provided by Charlie Mix. Source: UTC, U.S. Census Bureau SafeGraph.
Based on the data in the above map, this map shows the annual visitation for each park in the region. Map provided by Charlie Mix. Source: UTC and SafeGraph.
