Context

Stenshuvud National Park is a national park located in Skåne, in the south of Sweden. It covers nearly 400 ha and has for centuries been a place of small-scale agriculture and grazing.

Stenshuvud’s reputation is to be one of the most visited national parks in Sweden. One of the reasons for this popularity is the presence of large cities such as Lund, Helsinborg and Malmö nearby.

The national park was created in 1986 by combining the area of the former nature reserve and the surrounding areas. It is home to a great biological diversity with 600 different plant species, and mosaic-like landscapes of meadows, deciduous forests, beaches, and marshes.

It has several accesses and numerous hiking trails, as well as facilities for easy access for people with reduced mobility. One of the tourist attractions of the park is the view from the top of the hill, which on a clear day can reach as far as the island of Bornholm.

Prior to the attendance study, the park was already equipped with 3 car counters and 2 permanent pedestrian counters installed at the park entrance. These systems made it possible to know the number of passages at the entrances and to measure attendance at specific places. But it was not possible to know precisely the number of visitors on the whole park.

To transform the question from “how many visits?” to “how many annual visitors?”, the managers of Stenshuvud National Park called on Eco-Counter’s Data Service team to produce a specific report in 2022.

Methodology

Mobile pedestrian counters were placed at four entrances, in addition to the permanent pedestrian count locations already established, to ensure complete coverage of all major access points to Stenshuvud. In total, there were two count locations at the north entrance, three locations at the main west entrance, and one count point at the south entrance.

Data validation was performed to exclude anomalous data (nulls, extreme values, incomplete or inconsistent), and reconstruct data when necessary.

NB: Counts were reconstructed down to the smallest time interval using a model developed from relationships with nearby, highly correlated reference counters. The methodology used follows the best practices developed in TRR, a peer-reviewed journal.

Different assumptions were then made to estimate the number of visitors:

• ratio of people entering vs exiting the park is 1:1
• extrapolation of the total attendance in 2022 at the date of the report (end of October)
• correction of masking effects that can occur on group counts with PYRO technology (a correction factor was applied based on previous studies conducted at similar sites, increasing counts by 12%)

Results

From this analysis, it is estimated that the number of annual visitors to Stenshuvud Park was  246,000 in 2022.

July is the busiest month with 82,000 visitors.

Other lessons can be drawn from this report for the park managers: the analysis shows that 7 out of 10 visitors access the park through the main entrance.

Not surprisingly, weekend days are the most frequented (18% of the total on Saturdays, 17% on Sundays).

About our Data Services

At Eco-Counter, we are committed to providing high-quality data expertise services that are tailored to your specific needs. Whether you need specific reports, validation and data reconstruction, or estimation of annual or seasonal volumes from short-term counts, we can help.

Beyond our physical products, we offer a wide range of services that can help you gain insights into your data.

Here is how we can help:

• Our validation and data reconstruction services ensure that your data is accurate and reliable, so you can trust the results. Using a proven and reliable methodology, we validate, reconstruct data if needed, and communicate the results with you in full transparency.

• We can also create specific reports to provide detailed analysis of your data, giving you the information you need to make good decisions.

• In addition, we can also help you estimate annual or seasonal volumes from short-term counts. This is a valuable method for getting a better understanding of your network with less resources.

Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you make sense of your data!