Orientaciones cognitivas sobre el Concejo de Bogotá

The thesis contains a few important methodological limitations. While many of these have already been described in the papers, some general ones still remain and will therefore be addressed here. For example, a first limitation concerns the fact that not all outdoor recreation mon-itoring methods reported in national and international monmon-itoring manuals and handbooks have been included and evaluated upon in this PhD study (see Table 2 in Chapter 3). A decision was made not to add more monitoring methods in the thesis mainly due to time and cost issues. Nonetheless, it is recognized that the inclusion of other monitoring methods might result in the identification of new chal-lenges and opportunities in the work with applied outdoor recreation monitoring methods in coastal and marine areas. A future task there-fore is to explore more monitoring methods and their applications in coastal and marine areas in order to increase the chances of improving monitoring methods, experiences and results.

A second limitation is a temporal issue and concerns the choice of selecting the summer season as a research period in both field studies.

Kosterhavet National Park is a popular destination beyond the main (summer) season, such as it is seen in October, when the lobster season starts, and during Easter, when the first recreational boaters arrive. As a result, seasonal changes in the recreational use of the area may result in different requirements in terms of outdoor recreation monitoring. Results and learnings reported in the thesis may therefore not be representative either, as only the recreational use during the summer season has been studied in terms of monitoring conditions and needs. The choice of using the summer season for both research studies is, however, justified by the fact that the summer season is the high season in Kosterhavet, and thus also considered the most relevant season in terms of working with outdoor recreation monitoring activ-ities. An interesting future aspect would be to focus more on seasonal changes or variations in recreational uses, and what such changes and variations mean in terms of new requirements for outdoor recreation monitoring activities.

A related third limitation is the fact that the two field studies took place during two summers with unusual warm, and therefore also optimal weather conditions for outdoor recreation activities in Koster-havet. These circumstances affected the numbers of recreational users, activities and behavior, as the optimal summer conditions resulted in high levels of user numbers and activities, particularly at sea and in the natural harbors in the archipelago. In contrast, the summer of 2015 was very wet in terms of weather. As a result, outdoor activities were fewer, while the visitor center broke their visitor record as recreational users that year mainly prioritized indoor activities. Although monitoring activities were not performed in 2015 for the thesis, the scenario still shows that there can be significant differences and variation between summer seasons, mainly due to weather conditions. In terms of the thesis, this also means that the presented results and learnings reflect a study scenario with almost perfect weather conditions for outdoor recreation activities. It is therefore recognized that summers with less optimal outdoor recreation weather conditions may result in new situations in the area, for example more indoor activities and busy guest harbors, which will cause user issues and problems that require different monitoring strategies.

A fourth limitation concerns the fact that although the purpose of the thesis relates to coastal and marine areas in general, it cannot be denied that the methodological results and findings reported in the thesis only cover the study area in Kosterhavet National Park. In other words, there is no guarantee that the same methodological results and findings will be applicable in other coastal and marine areas (let alone other areas in general). For example, some coastal and marine areas, both inside and outside of the Nordic countries, are confronted with different area conditions and management challenges than the ones characteristic for Kosterhavet National Park. This may hinder trans-ferability of the results and findings reported in this thesis to these areas. Nevertheless, it is emphasized that most of the methodological findings in the thesis are of universal nature and should be considered regardless of what coastal and marine area (or area type in general) wherein they are applied. In particular, this concerns the advice to integrate local area conditions and management capacities into the work with outdoor recreation monitoring. In other words, even though the thesis results and findings for practical reasons are area specific, their relevance and usefulness is designed to be transferrable to other coastal and marine area contexts.

Finally, a fifth limitation concerns the fact that Kosterhavet National Park is a protected area with full time management in place. These circumstances may be interesting in terms of making international comparisons between protected areas, but can be a problem in terms of transferring the thesis experiences and results to areas without similar management capacities. For example, most coastal and marine areas in Sweden today, including many protected coastal and marine areas, rely on part time management from local authorities or interest groups who often have fewer or no resources to work with outdoor recreation monitoring (let alone management). As a result, it may be difficult in these areas to begin work on outdoor recreation monitoring at the scale or level that is emphasized in this thesis. Special considerations have therefore been taken in terms of how to make the thesis results and findings relevant to other coastal and marine area contexts, including those with minimal management resources, both within Sweden and internationally. The thesis suggestion of introducing new technology for monitoring is an example of this. New technology can be designed to be relative cost-effective and applicable to all area types, while also having the advantage that it does not rely on full time management.