Research and Projects
I study recreation ecology (yes, it's a real thing) which examines the interaction between visitors and the natural resource base when people recreate. Recreation inevitably results in impacts to the environment, but how people perceive and experience that environment also impacts the experiences that people have. My work utilizes both ecological and social data to try to understand the impacts of recreation by viewing parks and protected areas where people recreate as social-ecological systems. As recreation ecology is an applied field, I work closely with managers of parks and protected areas to provide useful information to inform sustainable management of park and protected area resources.
Click here to listen to a podcast interview about the social science work I do!
Visitor density (from GPS data) in Rocky Mountain NP
Visitors to Grand Prismatic Spring, Yellowstone NP
Understanding visitor spatial behavior patterns
Where visitors go in time and space (and when they go there) can influence impacts to park and protected area resource. To better understand these patterns, I use GPS-based tracking of visitors to observe their spatial behavior patterns and analyze these patterns using spatial analysis techniques to provide meaningful and interpretable data to protected area managers to help inform management decisions.
Understanding visitors
Understanding where visitors go without understanding why people go there gives an incomplete understanding of exactly why and how impacts may occur. The majority of my work has paired survey data on visitor motivations, knowledge, demographics, and other data with spatial data to understand what factors may be driving visitor spatial behavior patterns. Combining social and spatial data gives park and protected area managers a more complete understanding of visitor behavior, and as such may enable the development of more proactive, predictive management approaches.
Current Research Projects
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Understanding recreation and wildlife interactions on Pilot Hill (Laramie, WY)
The Pilot Hill property is partly owned by the University of Wyoming and partly owned by a private party, but a collaborative, multi-partner process is underway for the State of Wyoming to acquire the private property in the first half of 2020. The property contains significant wildlife habitat for a range of species including black bear, mountain lion, bobcat, bald eagles, and winter range for like elk, moose, and pronghorn. The property also contains significant recreational resources. This project is using a before-after-control-impact (BACI) study design to assess the impact that recreationists have on wildlife as non-motorized recreation opportunities are developed on the property.
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Managing and monitoring the coexistence of recreationists and wildlife in Teton County, WY
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Recreation impacts to wildlife are a challenge for land managers and communities worldwide. With increasing recreation use (as measured by annual and seasonal visitation levels), this issue has become prevalent in recreation-destination communities throughout the US, particularly in areas where high visitor use and important wildlife habitat overlap, like the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. As part of a broader, collaborative effort between land managers, community members, and non-profit organizations to establish a community ethic around coexistence of recreation and wildlife, I am working with a Master's student to understand how recreational activity influences wildlife, acceptable thresholds of both human and wildlife presence, and critical metrics for sustaining wildlife populations in areas where developed recreation opportunities exist.
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Postdoctoral Research
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Understanding visitor use and behavior in Orange County Open Space Areas
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Home to over three million people, Orange County, CA (situated between the major metropolitan areas of Los Angeles and San Diego), is also home to an extensive, interconnected network of protected areas and open spaces. These areas have been managed to conserve critical wildlife habitat, but are also open for recreation, including hiking, mountain biking, and equestrian uses. I have been working to both collect and analyze data about visitor use levels, patterns, and motivations for recreation to aid open space managers in understanding visitor use and how this use aligns (or is misaligned) with conservation goals.
See more photos from this and other research sites in the Research in Action Gallery
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NSF-CONNECT: Global connections and changing resource use systems in the Arctic
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As part of an international, interdisciplinary research team, I have been working to draft a theoretical paper that will provide a framework to help identify both the social and ecological effects of changes in land use due to tourism activity, mineral extraction and local socioeconomic conditions. This research will help inform the overall project goal of analyzing the link between global connections, communities and environmental change in the arctic.
Mountain bikers in Orange County participating in our GPS tracking and survey study.
Signage treatment on a trail in Acadia NP
Dissertation Research
Grand Teton National Park: Visitor spatial behaviors in vehicles and during "wildlife jams" in the Moose-Wilson Corridor
The Moose-Wilson Corridor is located in the very southeastern corner of Grand Teton National Park, and is home to a variety of recreation opportunities, including hiking, driving for pleasure, and wildlife and scenery viewing. In a large, collaborative research project conducted in the corridor, I helped collect data on visitor spatial behavior patterns as well as survey data on visitor motivations to help inform the development of the parks Comprehensive Management Plan for the corridor. In a separate, smaller project, I received a grant from the UWNPS Research Station to study the spatial distribution of and visitor and wildlife behaviors during "wildlife jams" (traffic jams caused by wildlife) events in the corridor.
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Acadia National Park: The effect of minimum impact education on visitor spatial behavior
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In Acadia National Park, I was part of a collaborative team of researchers from the University of Vermont and Utah State University who employed a quasi-experimental design to test the effect of several different minimum impact education treatments (two different signs and a personal contact) on their ability to minimize visitor off-trail travel on trails leading to the summit of Sargent Mountain. We collected GPS-based tracking data paired to a post-survey instrument designed to understand visitor knowledge, experience history, and assessment of resource conditions on the trail and at the summit.
Other Research Projects
Visitor spatial behavior on the Longs Peak Trail, Rocky Mountain National Park
In order to understand visitor use levels on Longs Peak, the only 14,000' summit in Rocky Mountain National Park, myself and team of researchers GPS-tracked visitors on the Longs Peak Trail and the Keyhole Route, the only non-technical route to the summit of Longs Peak. We also tested the use of game cameras as a means to capture visitor use levels above treeline where installation and calibration of traditional infrared trail counters is impractical.
The "diamond" or east face of Longs Peak as seen from the Keyhole Route
Publications
Peer Reviewed
In Prep/Review
Budowle, R., Sisneros-Kidd, A. M., Smutko, L. S., & Stefanich, R. L. (In Review). Narratives of place: Integrated digital storytelling and story- mapping as sustainable recreation management. Journal of Parks and Recreation Administration.
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Creany, N. E., Monz, C. A., D’Antonio, A., Sisneros-Kidd, A., Wilkins, E. J., Nesbitt, J., & Mitrovich, M. (In Review). Estimating trail use and visitor spatial distribution using mobile device data: An example from the Nature Reserve of Orange County, California USA. Journal of Environmental Challenges.
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Ray, J., Sisneros-Kidd, A. M., McCoy, D. P., & Welsh, K. M. (In Review). Education in ecotourism: Strategies that can promote pro-environmental learning outcomes. Environmental Education Research.
Sisneros-Kidd, A. & Monz, C. (In Prep). Characterizing visitor behavior associated with "wildlife jam" events in Grand Teton National Park, USA. Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism.
D’Antonio, A., Sisneros-Kidd, A., Pettebone, P., & Peterson, B. (In Review). Levels and Patterns of Use in Parks and Protected Areas. In M. Brownlee, W. Freimund, J. Hallo, Z. Miller & J. R. Sharp (Eds.) Visitor Use Management in Parks and Protected Areas.
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Published
Sisneros-Kidd, A. M., D’Antonio, A., Monz, C., & Mitrovich, M. (2021). Improving understanding and management of the complex relationship between visitor motivations and spatial behaviors in parks and protected areas. Journal of Environmental Management, 280, 111841.
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Minton, E. M., Sisneros-Kidd, A., & Monz, C. (2020). “Minor Crimes” Against Wildlife: Small Offenses, Lasting Impact, and a Proposed Solution. Psychology and Marketing. DOI: 10.1002/mar.21412
Pettebone, D., D’Antonio, A., Sisneros-Kidd, A., & Monz, C. (2019). Modeling Visitor Use on High Elevation Mountain Trails: An example from Longs Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park, USA. Journal of Mountain Science, 16, 2882-2893. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11629-019-5663-9
Monz, C., Mitrovich, M., D'Antonio, & Sisneros-Kidd, A. (2019). Using mobile device data to estimate visitation in parks and protected areas: An example from the Nature Reserve of Orange County, California. Journal of Park and Recreation Administration. doi: 10.18666/JPRA-2019-9899
Sisneros-Kidd, A. M., Monz, C.A., Hausner, V., Schmidt, J., Clark, D. (2019). Nature based tourism, resource dependency, and resilience of Arctic communities: Framing complex issues in a changing environment. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 27(8), 1259-1276
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Fuentes, A., Heaslip, K., Sisneros-Kidd, A. M., D’Antonio, A., Kelarestaghi, K. B. (2019). A decision tree approach to predicting vehicle stopping from GPS tracks in a national park scenic corridor. Transportation Research Record.
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Fuentes, A., Heaslip, K., Kidd, A., & D’Antonio, A. (2019). Evaluating national park entrance station queues: A case study in Grand Teton National Park. Case Studies on Transport Policy
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Kidd, A. M., D’Antonio, A., Monz, C., Heaslip, K., Taff, D., Newman, P. (2018). A GPS-based classification of visitors’ vehicular behavior in a protected area setting. Journal of Parks and Recreation Administration, 36, 72-92.
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Kidd, A. M., Monz, C., D’Antonio, A., Reigner, N., Manning, R., Goonan, K., & Jacobi, C. (2015). The effect of minimum impact education on visitor spatial behavior in parks and protected areas: An experimental investigation using GPS-based tracking. Journal of Environmental Management, 162, 53-62.
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Technical/Grant Reports
Sisneros-Kidd, A., D’Antonio, A., Creany, N., Monz, C., & Schoenleber, C. (2019). Recreation Use and Human Valuation on the Nature Reserve of Orange County, California. Project Progress Report and Data Collection Summary. Submitted to the Natural Communities Coalition.
Graham, R. Monz, C., & Sisneros-Kidd, A. (2018). An Assessment of Visitor Created Impacts in Riparian Areas in Rocky Mountain National Park, CO. Project Summary Report. Submitted to Rocky Mountain National Park.
Graham, R., Monz, C., & Kidd, A. (2017). An assessment of informal trails and visitor spatial behavior on the Twin Sisters trail in Rocky Mountain National Park, CO. Project Summary Report. Submitted to Rocky Mountain National Park.
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Kidd, A. M., & Monz, C. (2017). Understanding and managing wildlife jams in National Parks: An evaluation in Grand Teton National Park. University of Wyoming National Park Service Research Center Annual Report, 40.
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Kidd, A., Graham, R., & Monz, C. (2016). Visitor use on Longs Peak: A preliminary assessment in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado. Report of Findings. Submitted to Rocky Mountain National Park.
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