Reflecting on Visitor Data for Landscapes with Multiple Actors

Last autumn, I came across the artwork above by Eeva Karuh at the Kiasma Museum in Helsinki. At first, it looked almost like a painting. In fact, it was created by layering photographs taken from the exact same position every day over the course of a year. Each photograph is precise on its own, while the combined image captured seasonal change, movement, and the passing of time. The resulting landscape painting becomes open to different ways of seeing. Different viewers may connect it to their own memories, experiences, and understandings of landscapes.

This inspired me to reflect on my PhD research on visitor data for collaborative governance of Nordic multiuse landscapes. I began to wonder how collected knowledge about visitors can be understood and interpreted by people with different views of the same landscape, and how it can become a shared basis for discussion. Over the past weeks, both the VIMAS Training School and the Nordic Geography Meeting provided new insights and inspiration.

VIMAS Training School: Listening to different Actors in Swedish and Norwegian Landscapes

In early June, we gathered at Mid Sweden University for this year’s VIMAS Training School and travelled together through different places and landscapes, ending ten days later in Dovrefjell, Norway. After our first training school two years ago in Denmark, which focused on visitor monitoring, and the second last year in Finland on knowledge for tourism destinations, this final training school addressed the topic ‘Visitor management in nature areas under pressure: from policy to action’. The focus was on how different groups involved in recreational landscapes interact with, benefit from and are affected by visitors, including planning authorities, environmental agencies, Sámi representatives, local communities, tourism associations, and researchers. Both during hikes through highly visited landscapes, such as Vålådalen and Dovrefjell, and in classrooms, visitor centers, and agency offices, invited guests shared their experiences and perspectives on visitors and visitor data.

In the numerous lectures and discussions, it quickly became clear that visitor data is often missing or limited. Such data may be needed to better understand visitors and their movement through landscapes, to plan ahead, and to assess, for example, whether measures such as information campaigns are effective in influencing behavior in ecologically or culturally sensitive areas. Personally, I found it especially interesting how different actor groups hold different expectations of what visitor data should show and how it should be collected in order to be trusted. One speaker during the course explained that his trust in visitor data depends on who collects it and which aspects it focuses on. Trust may also be influenced by previous histories of conflict or distrust between the different actors in landscapes. Nevertheless, while several actors recognized the need to collaborate and discuss visitor-related issues in shared landscapes, agreeing on which data should inform these discussions seems more challenging.

I especially appreciated how openly the invited speakers and participants shared their experiences and personal stories with us students. Listening to them helped me understand how different landscape relations, responsibilities, and histories shape what actors expect from visitor data and how trust depends on data collection processes and conditions. This highlighted the importance of listening to the involved landscape actors to determine what data is needed and how it should be collected.

Nordic Geography Meeting: The Researchers' Role in Framing Challenges

A few days later, I attended the Nordic Geography Meeting, a conference held every second year in a different Nordic country. This year, the University of Iceland hosted the three-day conference in Reykjavík under the theme “Restless Geographies.” The program covered a wide range of topics, from landscape changes driven by tourism to geography education and energy landscapes. There, I had the chance to contribute to the session “Knowledge-Making as a Spatializing Process” and to present my ongoing research on how and under what conditions knowledge about recreation can support landscape governance.

One presentation that particularly inspired me was given by two Norwegian researchers (K. A. Lund and B. Granås), who reflected on the future of the public access right in the Nordic countries. They discussed how shorter visits, weaker personal relationships, and reduced connections to landscapes contribute to a declining sense of care and responsibility. These changing outdoor recreation practices both limit opportunities for outdoor recreation and increasingly contribute to ecological impacts and conflicts in landscapes with multiple actors.

Beyond the individual presentations, I became increasingly curious about how researchers framed and presented their work to an audience with diverse research interests. I paid attention to how they introduced a challenge, told its story, explained its relevance, and engaged the audience in discussing new insights. This made me reflect on the broader role researchers play in shaping how knowledge is understood. Through the way we collect, frame, and communicate research, we also influence what becomes visible and how a challenge is understood. The way knowledge, insights, and data are framed, therefore, shapes how people with different backgrounds can relate to research and to what extent it can become a shared basis for discussion.

Framing Visitor Data for Multiple Landscape Actors

In conclusion, the training school highlighted both the need for visitor data and the challenges of making visitor data trusted and relevant among different landscape actors. The conference made me reflect on the role of researchers, which goes beyond providing knowledge and includes framing it in ways that make it understandable and accessible to people in different contexts. So, for my own research, I wonder how visitor data can be trusted and understood by different people, and how it can become a basis for discussion about landscapes without losing its precision or complexity?