RESUMEN
Through a quantitative approach, this study aimed to clarify the changes in the number of visitors and visits to green spaces according to green space type before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. We explored the changes in the proportion of repeat visitors and the distance between green spaces and visitors' places of residence. We used KDDI Location Analyzer, which performs novel analysis using mobile phone GPS and census data. The study area included 10 target sites (urban parks and nature trails in the backcountry) located in the Sapporo metropolitan area in Japan. The survey period included snow-free seasons from 2019 to 2021, and 2019 was considered the period "before the pandemic." The results revealed that the number of visits during the pandemic increased compared with those before the pandemic, except for those of urban parks near the city center. In 2020, the proportion of repeat visitors increased for all 10 target sites. In addition, since the outbreak of the pandemic, distances between all urban parks and visitors' residences decreased. The same trend was observed for nature trails in the backcountry close to the city center. These findings indicate a generally decreasing trend in the number of visits to green spaces as many people have been refraining from visiting the site since the outbreak of the pandemic. Contrastingly, the number of visits by repeat visitors who reside close to the target sites has increased in some cases, which compensated for the general decreases.
RESUMEN
The abandonment of irrigated paddy land has increased in Japan, which can cause a decline in food security and biodiversity. Despite the importance of individual decisions, most studies have only examined regional or community-based determinants of paddy land abandonment. This study aimed to uncover the socio-economic determinants affecting individual landowners' decisions to abandon paddy land, using Japanese agricultural census data (2005, 2010, and 2015) composed of over one million unique paddy landowners. Results showed that low agricultural benefits are a key driver of abandonment, similar to European countries. Conversely, there is a positive correlation between the population of full-time cultivators in a household and paddy land abandonment, which contradicts previous evidence. Although some mosaics of socio-ecological landscapes with high biodiversity formed through long-term human influence (i.e., the Satoyama landscapes) are less-favored agricultural areas, the paddy land in some of these landscapes tends not to be abandoned. These findings support effective policymaking that balances biodiversity conservation and the provision of agroecosystem services in semi-natural landscapes.