Abstract
This chapter locates a set of points of tourist spots distributed on a peripheral mountain area by GIS mapping, illustrates that accessibility and neighbor to community are the influencing factors of tourism cluster in a peripheral mountain area, and further analyzes the benefits of tourism cluster of establishing cooperation network by tourism associations. This research investigates the linkages and local impacts between tourism and agriculture of a well-known organic agricultural area of fruits in Taiwan. This research aims to demonstrate the increased tourism development due to the tourist attractions of organic agriculture and religious spots in a peripheral region through a tourism clustering process. By collecting a set of points of tourist spots specified to GIS slope raster and point density surface, tourism-agriculture linkages and their local impacts are demonstrated.
TopBackground
The potential for creating synergistic relationships between tourism and agriculture has been widely recognized by development planners, policy makers. Commonly, economic leakage is the main factor for why the linkage of tourism and agriculture to promote local economic development in peripheral regions. Food is an essential component of tourism and also represents a significant part of tourism expenditure, and creating and strengthening the linkages between tourism and local food production sectors can provide a proximate market. The concept of “farm-to-fork” demonstrates the linkages between the dimensions of sustainable agriculture, sustainable cuisine and tourism by increasing demand for local products. Farm-to-fork concept also can lead to a range of related direct and indirect tourism activities such as food festivals, farm visits, factory tours and souvenir food merchandise, thus further enhancing the benefits to the local (Berno, 2011).
Torres (2002) explores the linkages between tourism and agriculture in the Yucatan Peninsula, observes that the principal force driving hotel purchasing hotel food differences by tourist nationality and type of tourist based on tourist food consumption and preferences. So, in the Yucatan Peninsula Mexican foods, tropical fruits and organic produce are identified as this study area significant potential tourist food for linking tourism and local agriculture. Seaton (1999) examines tourism attraction in a peripheral region, identified critical success factors to small scale sustainable development, indicated that peripheral areas, distance from core areas with sparse populations and low GDP economic structure can motivate visitors to through some kind of special attraction such as book town for retailing. Gardiner and Scott (2014) investigates successful tourism cluster on the Gold Coast, Australia to develop the youth tourism market, through joint promotion and product development as an attractive destination. They propose that niche tourism clusters are often used to improve competitiveness to achieve economic advantages, through use of concepts of strategic alliances and networks. Cluster is therefore a fundamental factor to creating successful tourism industry within a destination zone.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Elevation Analysis: An analysis way of terrain based on GIS mapping. Elevation analysis can perform certain analytical tasks quickly and easily, without having to collect or update an authoritative set of base data. Elevation analysis is essential for many GIS applications example for natural resource management, conservation, agriculture, transportation, risk management.
GIS Mapping: A method of digital mapping and a technology that offers different tools in which we produce and use the maps to manage our communities and industries. GIS creates intelligent super maps through which sophisticated planning and analysis can be performed based on the transformation of spatial locations of real-world features and visualize the spatial relationships among them.
Point Density Analysis: A tool of GIS mapping that can calculate the density of point features around each output raster cell. A neighborhood is defined around each raster cell center, and the number of points that fall within the neighborhood is totaled and divided by the area of the neighborhood. Possible uses include finding density of disease cases, crime cases, or firms clustering. For example, one address might actually represent a crime case, or some crime cases might be weighted more heavily than others in determining crime rates. Increasing the radius will not greatly change the calculated density values. Although more points will fall inside the larger neighborhood, this number will be divided by a larger area when calculating density. The main effect of a larger radius is that density is calculated considering a larger number of points, which can be outside from the raster cell.
GIS: A system designed to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, and present all types of spatial or geographical data. GIS tools allow users to create interactive queries, analyze spatial information, edit data in maps, and present the results of all these operations. GIS can specify locations or extents in the coordinate system recorded as dates/times of occurrence, and x, y, and z coordinates representing, longitude, latitude, and elevation by using location as the key index variable.
DTM: A digital representation of ground-surface topography or terrain represents the bare ground surface without any objects like plants and buildings. DTM is a topographic model of the bare earth-terrain relief that can be manipulated by computer programs. Vegetation, buildings and other man-made artificial features are removed digitally-leaving the underlying terrain. The data files contain the spatial elevation data of the terrain in a digital format which usually presented as a rectangular grid, and can further be transformed to visualize slope, aspect and viewshed conditions of the terrain.
GPS: A satellite-based navigation system made up of a network of 24 satellites placed into orbit by the U.S. Department of Defense. GPS was originally intended for military applications, but in the 1980s, the government made the system available for civilian use. GPS works in any weather conditions, anywhere in the world, anytime in a day.