Bowness Fieldwork - Human

Tourism is having a positive impact on the honeypot site of Bowness on Windermere.

• Easily accessible for us as it's an hour from school
• Popular tourist destination for UK and overseas tourists
• A wide range of human and physical attractions

• Traffic on busy roads with narrow pavements - cross safely in groups.
• Not being alone: collecting data in groups of 3 or more so that people were not walking alone down quiet roads. Safety in numbers.
• Water: take care when down by the lake. Do not go near to the water for fear of falling in and drowning.

• Primary Data
• Sample Size: Every building on my transect
• How did you collect the data?:
  • Walked around every street on my transect map.
  • Classified the ground floor of every building using a land use key that was designed at school.
• Why?:
  • Shows tourism is having a positive impact on the economy.
  • It allows us to see how many buildings on my transect are directly linked to tourism.
• Strengths of method:
  • Gave us a good idea of the areas of Bowness that were being affected by tourism.
  • Reliable data from large sample size.
• Weakness of method:
  • Only surveyed ground floor - didn't collect data from upstairs.
  • Could have been residential housing upstairs which might have changed conclusions.
  • Some results were subjective.

• Primary Data
• Sample Size: 6 Sites
• How did you collect the data?:
  • 7 categories to survey at each of the 6 sites in Bowness on Windermere.
  • Sites chosen at random before we went to Bowness on Windermere.
  • Scored each category between -2 and +2.
• Why?:
  • Shows tourism is having a negative impact on the enviroment.
  • To see how tourism impacts different parts of Bowness.
• Strengths of method:
  • Wide range of data collected.
  • Easy to compare sites.
  • Sample was spread out around Bowness.
• Weaknesses of method:
  • Subjective based on opinions of noise, pollution, etc.
  • Only one machine used to measure noise (Decibel meter).
  • Small sample size.

• Method:
  • Coloured Land Use Transect which was split into three zones.
  • A proportional pie chart was produced for each zone.
  • The size of the circle showed the number of buildings that were directly related to tourism.
• Strengths:
  • Pie charts make it easy to see paterns in the data.
  • Visually simple.
  • Pie charts are commonly used to show this type of data.
• Weaknesses:
  • Requires a key to read it.
  • Can be hard to read accurately if there are small segments.

• Method:
  • Bi-Polar Bar Charts.
• Strengths:
  • Shows data in frequency distribution.
  • Easy to estimate values at a glance.
  • Easy to compare sites/graphs.
  • Easy to compare individual categories.
• Weaknesses:
  • Requires additional explanation to understand what they show.
  • Can be easily manipulated to show false impressions.

• The land use transect has three zones.
  • Zone 1 is nearest to Lake Windermere.
  • Zone 2 is around the Central Business District.
  • Zone 3 is furthest from the lake.
• The pie charts show that Zone 3 has the largest number of buildings surveyed and this number descreases as we move towards Zone 1.
• The pie charts also clearly show that the proportion of buildings related to tourism increases as we move closer to the lake.
• For example, in Zone 3 there were 231 buildings in total but only 10% of these were directly related to tourism. However, in Zone 1 there were only 6 buildings but 65% of these were related to tourism.
• This could be because the main tourist car park is located in Zone 1 along with the main tourist attraction of Lake Windermere, where tourists can catch a boat for a cruise on the lake.

From this data I can conclude that tourism is clearly having a positive economic impact on the honeypot site of Bowness on Wndermere.

• The environmental quality survey data shows that the further away you travel from Lake Windermere in Zone 1, the lower the envirnomental scores given.
• By the lake in Zone 1, the amount of litter was minimal (+2), as was the noise level (+1). In contrast, site 5, in Zone 3, had quite a lot of litter (-1) with noise also being very high (-1). This site was on the main road into Bowness so there was a lot of traffic including delivery vans and cars.
• The area by the lake might have been kept cleaner by the local council as it is the main tourist area. If tourists felt the area was untidy and poorly looked after perhaps they would go somewhere else.

My environmental survey results show that tourists areas of Bowness have higher environmental scores. This suggests that tourism is having a positive environmental impact on the honeypot site of Bowness on Windermere.

The data I collected clearly supports my hypothesis that "Tourism is having a positive impact on the honeypot site of Bowness on Windermere".

The land use data clearly shows that tourist businesses are flourishing in areas that are popular with tourists, close to the main attractions e.g. Lake Windermere.

The enviromental quality survey shows that areas close to the main attractions have the best environment. This suggests that tourism is having a positive impact on the environment of Bowness on Windermere.

Land Use Survey:

• We only collected data for the ground floor level of each building on the transect.
• This only gave us half of the data that might have been avaliable to us.
• We might have found that the other floors of some of the buildings were used for residential housing with the ground floor used as business.
• This would have affected our results and conclusion as we might have found that there was a smaller percentage of buildings overall that were linked to tourism.

Solution: Use two maps and survey both ground floor and first floor of each building.

Environmental Quality Survey:

• Much of the data collected for the survey was subective rather than using digital instruments such as a decibel meter for noise or an air quality instrument.
• This meant that our data could easily be biased or inaccurate.
• If our data was inaccurate then we could have concluded that the environment was best in Zone 1 when it actually wasn't.

Solution: Use accurate instruments to take environmental readings for noise and air pollution.