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Micael Runnström

Micael Runnström

Senior lecturer

Micael Runnström

How Wild is Iceland? Wilderness Quality with Respect to Nature-based Tourism

Author

  • Rannveig Olafsdottir
  • Micael Runnström

Summary, in English

The Icelandic highlands are one of the few places left in Europe where tourists can experience pristine wilderness. During the past decades the highlands have, however, witnessed a rapid expansion in natural resource exploitation. This study attempts to evaluate the pristine condition of Icelandic wilderness by testing different methods of identifying and analysing wilderness with respect to nature-based tourism. The wilderness areas were mapped with respect to proximity to anthropogenic structures (proximity analysis) as well as what is actually visible in the landscape in relation to topography (viewshed analysis). When analysed with respect to proximity, result maps indicate that wilderness covers a little less than 34 percent of Iceland. When assessed at a national scale, results from the viewshed analysis show similar results. However, evaluation of the two methods tested indicates that the viewshed analysis gives a more dynamic image of the Icelandic wilderness areas, whereas the proximity analysis simply highlights static buffer zones relative to the network of anthropogenic features. It is concluded that a viewshed analysis provides a more qualitative result regarding the Icelandic wilderness resource at a local scale with respect to nature-based tourism.

Department/s

  • Dept of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science

Publishing year

2011

Language

English

Pages

280-298

Publication/Series

Tourism Geographies

Volume

13

Issue

2

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Routledge

Topic

  • Physical Geography

Keywords

  • Wilderness assessment
  • nature tourism
  • proximity analysis
  • viewshed
  • analysis
  • geographical information system (GIS)
  • Iceland

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1461-6688