Mapping potential conflicts between wilderness travel and ecological values on a national scale

Human activity has been significant driving force behind global declines in remaining wilderness areas. Previous assessments of human activity have focused on long-term cumulative human pressure. However, the growing popularity of nature-based tourism has led to increased tourists' footfall in remote wilderness areas. These short-term tourists' activities, if not assessed and properly restricted, may aggregate to form new potential impact zones. This study maps the potential conflicts between tourism pressure and wilderness' ecological value on a national scale across China. By comparing distribution of conflict zones created through persistent human and tourism pressure, we identify wilderness areas threatened by pressures from tourism. Employing a Self Organizing Maps algorithm, we extract distinctive landscape features of wilderness areas, thereby shedding light on their attraction to visitors and subsequent ecological vulnerability. Our results show that, about two-thirds of China's land is identified as wilderness with 12 types of landscape character, among which 8.9% of wilderness areas suffer from some level of tourism pressure. Moreover, 80.3% of HH (high tourism pressure and high ecological values) conflict zones are concentrated in the southeast of China. Finally, 46.1% of HH conflict zones are unaffected by persistent human activities but are threatened by tourist activities. Our findings contribute to future placement and functional zoning of wilderness reserves in China, with potential applicability to conflict governance and wilderness conservation strategies in other developing countries.