Spatiotemporal analysis to understand overflight travel patterns at HawaiI Volcanoes National Park

Overflights, especially low-level flights, have a measurable impact on the acoustic environment of the areas they traverse. This is of particular concern to protected areas with a mission of protecting natural resources, cultural resources, and the visitor experience. Yet, understanding overflight travel patterns at parks and protected areas has proven difficult to determine. Recent technology makes it possible to collect accurate overflight data allowing researchers to quantify travel patterns across a protected area. Location data, including x, y, and z data, can be used to quantitatively assess effects of overflights and to inform solutions to protect resources and the visitor experience. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to spatiotemporally quantify overflight travel patterns at Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park using data derived from Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) technology. Location data, a digital grid, and hot spot clustering were used to identify spaces with a statistically-significant high volume of overflights. Some of these spaces overlap with terrestrial visitor attraction locations, suggesting potential for degraded visitor experience. Specifically, results indicate a spatial trend of low-flying overflights along the eastside of the park, a high volume of overflights near Nāpau Trailhead and Nāpau Crater, and spatial clustering of overflights varies across hour of the day. The described methods provide a foundation for future research and the results are useful for informing the designation of lateral and minimum altitude parameters for low-level overflights such as air tours.