Human interactions with each other and the environment are intrinsically connected to the opportunities and limitations of where we live and where we are able to go. The connections between places of origin, destinations, and travel routes mean that recreation and tourism inherently rely on spatial concepts of place and human-environment interactions. Tourism and recreation are major economic drivers, yet these sectors are constantly evolving as people embrace different ways to travel and recreate and environmental and socio-economic conditions change. Advances in GIS technology and computing ability are shaping the questions asked and tools used by researchers to understand the drivers and impacts of recreation. In this entry, we highlight current research and approaches used to characterize access to green spaces in urban areas, to understand recreational behaviors and tourist preferences through social media, to map landscape aesthetics and cultural ecosystem services, and to quantify the impacts of tourism and recreation on protected areas. Starting with urban areas and local extents and moving to protected areas and regional processes, we summarize scholarship focused on different types of places and occurring across different extents and scales to provide a digest of current research.
Landscapes are important socio-ecological systems that play a central role in understanding and managing intricate relationships between humans and their environment. Over time, individuals and groups develop a sense of place and form deep cultural connections with landscapes, which in turn influence how people perceive and interact with them. This means that it is essential to incorporate a sense of place and cultural connections into landscape-related studies and landscape management efforts to ensure success. GIS are a useful tool for effectively mapping the biophysical and socioeconomic elements of landscapes and can integrate these representations through their shared geography. However, there are significant challenges in capturing and representing cultural perceptions and sense of place in a GIS. Since successful landscape management is participatory and collaborative, the limitations of GIS need to be acknowledged, but the strengths of GIS when used to support participatory work should be capitalised upon. A collaborative approach using participatory GIS can help to collect holistic data that can capture some of the cultural narratives intertwined with the landscapes we seek to manage within the spatial framework provided by GIS.