DOI: 10.5061/dryad.h18931zm3
title: Extracted data from primary literature examining impacts of recreational activities on freshwater ecosystems

description: Aquatic ecosystems are attractive sites for recreation. However, human
 presence at or on aquatic ecosystems can have a range of ecological
 impacts, creating trade-offs between recreation as ecosystem service and
 biodiversity conservation. There is currently no synthesis of evidence
 regarding the ecological impacts associated with various forms of aquatic
 recreation, to compare the magnitude of effects between types of
 recreation. Therefore, conservation conflicts surrounding water-based
 recreation are difficult to manage. We conducted a global meta-analysis,
 differentiating various recreational impacts and the type of recreational
 uses in four categories: shore use, shoreline angling, swimming and
 boating; and studied ecological impacts directed at three levels of
 biological organization: individuals, populations, and communities. We
 screened over 13,000 articles and identified 94 suitable studies providing
 701 effect sizes for inclusion in the meta-analysis. Aggregated across all
 animal and plant taxa, impacts of boating and shore use resulted in highly
 significant effects on almost all levels of biological organization.
 Regarding taxonomic groups, the most negative effects of water-based
 recreation were observed in invertebrates, whereas effects on birds were
 most pronounced at individual levels and not significant at community
 levels. From a conservation perspective, fostering water-based recreation
 and the ecological services they provide must be balanced with ecological
 impacts associated with the activities. Although generalizations are
 challenging, local scale effects of activity-specific constraints seem
 unlikely to be effective if other forms of water-based recreation
 continue.
description: <b>Systematic
 literature research using multiple data bases</b> We conducted a systematic
 literature search from November 2018 until February 2019 following the
 guidelines for systematic research by Siddaway, Wood
 [47]. We searched both peer-reviewed and gray literature in
 different languages to compile the best available evidence base. We
 constructed a search term containing synonyms for recreation AND aquatic
 AND impacts AND environment. The following search term was used for the
 literature research in the Web of Science Core collection:
 ((recreation* leisure (*shore NEAR/1 development) pleasure sport*
 tourist (human near/1 wildlife) (outdoNEAR/0 activity) (UV NEAR/1 (filter*
 protection screen))) AND (aquatic
 water* lake* river* stream* freshwater* marine riparian littoral coast*
 beach* reed* shore*) AND (impact*
 disturb* effect* affect* consequence* comparison* change* modification*
 alter* influence* behavio*r reaction* avoid* survival abundance fitness
 FID (flight NEAR/0 (initiation NEAR/0 distance)) population biodiversity
 conservation stress pressure trampl* litter* community assemblages
 introduction toxic pollution eutrophication (nutrient NEAR/1 input)
 endocrine reproducti*) AND
 (biodiversity (species NEAR/1 richness) sediment* (water NEAR/0
 (quality chemistry)) ecolog* animal* vegetation plant* macrophyte*
 wildlife *bird* *fowl mammal* fish* crayfish amphibia* reptile* insect*
 *invertebrat* habitat* biotop* ecosystem* invasive (food NEAR/0
 web))) NOT medic*
 NOT antibiotic* NOT cattle NOT coli Literature regarding archaea
 (e.g. E.coli) was excluded because these focused on human health issues
 and were in addition often associated with wastewater treatment plants as
 additional or only source besides recreation as source. We adapted the search terms for
 seven different literature databases (see supplement for search term
 variations) and yielded 13.115 articles: Web of Science Core Collection n
 = 6.937, Scopus n = 4.206, BioOne n = 1.056, Conservation Evidence n = 39,
 BASE n = 596, and ASFA n = 45. List of all search terms for each data base
 is given in the in the Supplemental protocol S1
description: #Coding procedure with all coded variables (metadata) are
 avainlable in the supplemental material (S1 protocol) via
 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5110023 #R code for
 statistical analysis of the mata-analysis of the manuscript RSPB-2020-3155
 entitled "Ecological impacts of water-based recreational activities
 on freshwater ecosystems: a global meta-analysis" in Proceedings B by
 Schafft et al. is also provided via
 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5110021