Recreation monitoring of Oregon forest lands

2020-2025
Oregon Department of Forestry
Oregon State University
US Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station

State parks and forests provide some of the most popular recreation sites for Oregonians to participate in a variety of activities including biking, hiking, and off-highway vehicle use. To effectively manage these sites, information on the amount and character of visitor use is essential. This project developed and applied recreation monitoring methods to efficiently measure and estimate visitor use at large numbers of recreation sites, incoperating data from passively-sensed counters, digital mobility sources (such as geolocated social media), and community science. Methods initally piloted at the Black Rock Mountain Biking Area were expanded to study areas in the Wilson River Corridor in the Tillamook State Forest to further test methods in a larger recration area with a wider variety of recreation activities. Outcomes from these studies are leading to the identification of recreation monitoring techniques to be applied to other recreation sites across the state.