Umeå University's logo

Cryotourism is a distinct form of tourism which is based on ice and snow cover and is thus highly determined by climatic conditions. While a considerable body of literature addresses the tourism-climate change nexus in (sub-)Arctic and European Alpine regions, little is known about the situation in South American high mountain and sub-Antarctic areas. Against this background, this perspective article presents a research agenda for cryotourism-climate change nexus from a South–North perspective. The initial step toward this objective was an 18-days research visit in Chile and Argentina during January and February 2024. Drawing upon our field notes, current literature and the latest developments in ice and snow-based tourism, we propose three key dimensions for a research agenda, namely: (a) tourism mobilities and southward spatial substitution, (b) socio-ecological implications of cryotourism for local communities, and (c) governance challenges for tourism stakeholders and policymakers. We contend that interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches to tourism and climate change research are key aspects to account for the global nature of tourism mobility flows, and the interlinks between local and global processes and impacts of climatic environmental transformations.

The polar regions are increasingly at the center of attention as the hot spots of climate crisis as well as tourism development. The recent IPCC reports highlight several climate change risks for the rather carbon-intensive and weather-based/dependent polar tourism industry in the Arctic and the Antarctic. This study presents the scholarly state-of-knowledge on tourism and climate change in the polar regions with a literature survey extending beyond the Anglophone publications. As a supporting tool, we provide a live web GIS application based on the geographical coverages of the publications and filterable by various spatial, thematic and bibliographical attributes. The final list of 137 publications indicates that, regionally, the Arctic has been covered more than the Antarctic, whilst an uneven distribution within the Arctic also exists. In terms of the climate change risks themes, climate risk research, i.e. impact and adaptation studies, strongly outnumbers the carbon risk studies especially in the Arctic context, and, despite a balance between the two main risk themes, climate risk research in the Antarctic proves itself outdated. Accordingly, the review ends with a research agenda based on these spatial and thematic gaps and their detailed breakdowns.

Previous research has highlighted the limitations encountered in representing the dynamism of language use and contacts. Here, linguistic landscapes from five towns in Northern Sweden are the point of departure for investigating novel perspectives through the geovisualization of multilingualism, with the ultimate aim of understanding how languages in our surroundings help construct public spaces. As an outcome, a web GIS application, based on 6865 thematically analyzed photographs, was developed as an interactive resource for visualizing and sharing the data and enabling new modes of analysis and new research questions. The article describes the data collection and curation processes, app development using GIS software and software-as-a-service, the eventual app design and interaction, and the update and maintenance plans, as well as discussing challenges and considerations related to temporalities, spatialities, and technicalities. The web GIS has potential applications in spatial analysis, research communication, and education.

Europe accounts for 51% of international tourist arrivals and the tourism industry provides about 10% of workplaces in Europe. Tourism will be impacted by climate change in a diverse number of ways. At the same time, tourism is also a significant contributor of greenhouse gas emissions. The aim of this article is, therefore, to provide an assessment of climate and carbon risks for the European tourism industry based on a systematic literature review. Climate risk is the dominant category with 313 papers (74%), while 110 papers (26%) were on carbon risks. The following gaps were identified: geographical gaps, especially in countries of the former Soviet Union and former Yugoslavia; a lack of coherent studies on national tourism’s and its sub-sectors’ emissions; research addressing how climate policies might affect tourism demand; assessments of the integrated carbon and climate risks; lack of evidence on the link between tourism climate indicators and tourism demand; lack of climate change and tourism studies addressing policy and institutional tools for adaptation and implementation of adaptation measures in destinations; and research on rising sea levels and coastal erosion and its impacts on tourism destinations and demand.

The project ‘Cryotourism in a warming world: Co-exploring glacier and snow-based tourism development in southern and northern peripheries’ aims to create an expert network for studying cryotourism in southern and northern peripheries. In our project, we defined cryotourism as a distinct form of tourism in which glaciers and snow constitute the main attraction. Consequently, the conditions of the ice and snow cover are highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. We argue that while a considerable body of literature addresses the cryotourism-climate change nexus in the North, little is known about the situation in the South. Therefore, this project addresses this gap by creating an expert network for studying cryotourism in southern and northern peripheries.

The North of Sweden is a part of Arctic Europe that includes both wilderness and expansive industrial developments. Both contribute substantially to attracting tourism. In this chapter, the North of Sweden (Arctic Sweden) is used to illustrate how and in what ways nature and nature experiences are utilised for sustainable destination development. Furthermore, that development is connected to issues of degrowth, arctification and the possibilities of regenerative tourism. Here, two cases from Arvidsjaur are used to illustrate different levels of sustainable development involved in destination planning and development: that of the private and that of the public. The cases are the Frog Spring (Swedish: Grodkällan, Sami: Tsuobbuoája), which is used to discuss public destination development in a sparsely populated place, and the dogsledding companies which are used to illustrate (as part of) degrowth ideologies on an individual level. Adding to the current debates on degrowth we want to bring together and highlight the complexity and nuance of public destination development based on ideas of sustainable development and outdoor recreation activities locally and the individual motivations for setting up and running a business based on degrowth ideologies to look at how trends affect the outcome of such endeavours. We draw on interviews, documents and publicly available online material, all of which provide insights into strategies, plans and businesses on the local level. Results suggest that although the awareness of the need for sustainable development and the will of public actors to contribute to it are high, the outcome of development and management using such frameworks does not necessarily lead to sustainable destination development as seen from a holistic point of view. This also holds for private entrepreneurs who, as individuals, are seeking a sustainable mode of life and income.

The continuous increase in greenhouse gas emissions in addition to other anthropogenic pressures on the environment related to the territory (e.g. extensive deforestation and urbanization) have led to important changes in climatic parameters, such as the increase in global surface temperature and fluctuations in precipitation levels. The response to climate change manifestations as well as the severity of the phenomena vary among different regions, leading to the creation of climate change hotspots. The Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East (EMME) region is considered among these hotspots due to increasing trends in mean temperature and temporal variability of its meteorological features as well as dependency on the tourism sector (Scott et al., 2019). According to relative projections, the temperature trends (mean temperature and summer peaks) in the region will continue to intensify throughout the 21st century leading to extreme weather events, such as heatwaves and severe prolonged droughts. The frequency, duration and magnitude of these events are expected to increase with severe impacts on society, the environment and economic activity in the region. In addition, increasing population growth and urbanization rates are expected to intensify competition over the local natural resources, thus leading to expansion and worsening of environmental issues and social inequalities. Additional risks are expectedfor tourism from potential sea level rise impacts due to climate change, affecting the majority of typicalregional tourist assets, the beaches, but also coastal tourism-related development, as well as natural risks,such as flooding and forest fires (Olya & Alipour, 2015).

This document presents an overview of key issues related to tourism and tourism development in theregion, highlighting that tourism as a multi-sectoral activity, is affected by and affects climate change inmultiple ways. Therefore, there is a need for a complex approach to climate change adaptation andmitigation from supporting basic resources (water, energy, soil) to key tourism assets (beaches, naturaland cultural heritage) and tourist destinations (in terms of spatial planning and management) (Jopp et al.,2010; Scott et al., 2012).

The purpose of the report is to provide a scientifically based set of recommendations for regional action.Furthermore, we aim at identifying particularities in the region and create opportunities to showcaseexperiences and good practices in the context of EMME-CCI.

The range of Arctic tourism supply is continuously increasing with a variety of tourism products on offer. However, climate change is becoming a more prominent issue threatening the operations of tourism businesses and the livelihood of some tourism actors, such as dogsledders. This article aims to fill the descriptive research gap that exists regarding the dependency on the physical environment, climate, and weather for dogsledding activities. This is achieved by studying how climate change may threaten possible climate and weather thresholds for these activities, and how climate change may affect the future opportunities for dogsledding in northern Sweden. The study is based on interviews with dogsledders in Arctic Sweden and climate projections from the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI). The results demonstrate the following thresholds for dogsledding activities: (1) dogsledding requires 10–20 cm of packed snow and/or solid ice on bodies of water, (2) above 15 °C is too hot for dogs to pull (wheeled) sledges, (3) cold weather thresholds are determined by visitors’ preferences and are not considered a problem for dogsledders or dogs, and (4) rain can cancel tours for all dogsledders, and strong wind can cancel tours for dogsledders located in the mountain regions. Finally, extreme events such as heatwaves, storms, thunderstorms, forest fires, heavy rain, floods, and more rapid weather changes have already affected some dogsledders. These necessary thresholds for dogsledding activities could already be jeopardized for the southern and coastal locations of Arctic Sweden. In addition, the climate projections from SMHI show that warmer days and more precipitation in the form of rain will become more common in the future, especially in the absence of global mitigation measures. However, further research on vulnerability/resilience and adaption strategies for dogsledding activities is necessary to truly understand the impact of climate change.

Kutup ayısı safarisi, kutup ışıkları ve gece yarısı güneşi seyri, buzul turizmi, Noel Baba Köyü ve Buz Otel gibi beşeri unsurların ziyareti ve kar ve buz sporları gibi Arktik ve Antarktik bölgelere özgün çekicilik ve etkinlikleri içeren kutup turizmi, gerek genellikle hava ve iklim unsurlarına dayalı olması, gerekse başta çok uzun mesafeli hava ulaşımı ve kruvaziyer gezileri gibi yüksek fosil yakıt tüketimine ve dolayısıyla sera gazı salımlarına yol açması nedeniyle artan bir şekilde turizm ve iklim krizi çalışmalarının odağında yer almaktadır. Bununla birlikte, çekicilikleri yok olmadan görme arzusuyla gerçekleşen “son şans turizmi” gibi trendler de hem kutup bölgeleri ziyaretlerinin popülerliğini hem de karbon ayak izini arttırmakta ve iklim krizine yönelik uyum ve azaltım süreçleri açısından ilginç bir paradoks yaratarak sözkonusu araştırmaları bu kesişim ekseninde derinleştirmektedir. Bu çalışmada, kutup turizmi ve iklim değişikliğine yönelik güncel çalışmaları derleyen bir coğrafi bilgi sisteminin tanıtılması amaçlanmaktadır. “POLTOUR” adlı bu “jeobibliyografya”, ArcGIS Pro ve Online yazılımları ve Experience Builder platformu yardımıyla, mevcut yayınları yerküre üzerinde çalışma alanlarına göre haritalayarak https://poltour.geo.umu.se/ adresinde kullanıma sunmuştur. POLTOUR sayesinde biliminsanları ve ilgililer etkileşimli bir şekilde görselleştirilen bu alanyazını keşfedebilecek, gerek tematik gerekse mekansal ve zamansal araştırma açıklarını tespit ederek kendi çalışma ve uygulama gündemlerini oluşturabileceklerdir. İleride POLTOUR’un sanal gerçeklik ve yapay zeka gibi teknolojilerle geliştirilmesine yönelik fikir ve prototipler de sunumda ele alınacaktır.

Arctic tourism and climate change has become a hot topic for research, yielding various publications from diverse disciplines. This chapter utilizes the latest techniques such as "geobibliography," Artificial Intelligence (AI) and "altmetrics" in understanding both the scholarly and the popular volumes of Arctic tourism and climate change literature and in order to identify research and outreach gaps towards a future agenda. Utilizing the AI-enhanced POLTOUR 2.0 Geobibliography, a web-mapping application that helps find spatiotemporal and thematic research gaps, we find that a lack of research on some Arctic nations, such as Sweden, as well as the dominance of research on climate vs carbon risks, is very apparent. Moreover, some well covered regions, such as Canada, have aged in research, and require more up-to-date studies. In addition, our altmetric measurements on policy and (social) media coverage of research show that active popular outreach and policy engagement are present, yet highly skewed. Balancing such gaps could aim for more pan-Arctic studies for more consistent and comparable results, and to help aid mutual learning at a time when capacity building is of utmost importance to engage actors and stakeholders for climate action on both mitigation of carbon risks and adaptation to climate risks.