Monitoramento do uso público em trilhas de ecoturismo com Informação Geográfica Voluntária (VGI): estudo de caso no Parque Nacional da Serra do Gandarela

Abstract

Ecotourism has been gaining prominence in recent decades as a type of tourism directly associated with the appreciation of the environment in a world in which environmental issues have become fundamental. Accordingly, there are ways to plan and promote ecotourism. However, within conservation units, there is the challenge of ensuring the sustainability of public use in the face of the overload of tourist attractions, a factor that weighs against the sustainability of local ecotourism. The objective of this dissertation was to investigate the spatial distribution and density of trails in the Serra do Gandarela National Park (SGNP), analyzing the factors that influence the creation and maintenance of these trails, as natural points of interest. To achieve this, it was necessary to go through steps such as modeling a geographic database and filling it with Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) data, obtained with web scraping techniques used on the Wikiloc website, as well as collaborative and in-house mapping of attractions. The intensity of tourist use in the region was assessed by analyzing trail density using kernel density estimation for line-type spatial data. Subsequently, using the zonal statistics tool, descriptive statistics were extracted regarding density, particularly the mean and standard deviation, overlaid by the polygonal features of municipalities and Voronoi polygons, generated from 58 attractions mapped in the study area. Finally, a spatial autocorrelation analysis was performed, using the Local Indicators of Spatial Association (LISA) method, to verify the local and univariate Moran's index, which demonstrated the occurrence of high and low density clusters throughout the study area, for different types of trails, such as walking, motorized vehicles and human-powered vehicles. The results showed that the municipalities of Rio Acima, Nova Lima, Caeté and Raposos have the highest average densities, in addition to Itabirito, which has one of the highest densities in some types of trails, such as motorized and human-powered vehicles. Particularly in the cases of Rio Acima, Raposos and Nova Lima, a contributing factor is the proximity of the urban areas of the municipalities to the SGNP, which is not the case of municipalities with lower average densities, such as Santa Bárbara. The result of the analysis by attractions was summarized in a synthesis for public use in the SGNP, in which intense use was observed in attractions located mainly in the municipality of Rio Acima, close to waterfalls and viewpoints. Other municipalities that are in the intense use category are Nova Lima, Caeté, Raposos and Itabirito (close to Rio Acima). Itabirito presents moderate public use in the other portions. Finally, the municipalities with incipient public use are Santa Bárbara and Ouro Preto. The results converged with other studies carried out in the area, corroborating that there are municipalities and attractions that, in fact, are subject to a lot or little pressure from ecotourism in the region.