Participatory Geographic-Information-System-Based Citizen Science: Highland Trails Contamination due to Mountaineering Tourism in the Dolomites

Environmental pollution is a persistent problem in terrestrial ecosystems, including remote mountain areas. This study investigates the extent and patterns of littering on three popular hiking trails among mountaineers and tourists in the Dolomites range located in northeastern Italy.
The data was collected adopting a citizen science approach with the participation of university students surveying the trails and recording the macroscopic waste items through a GPS-based offline platform. The waste items were categorized according to their material type, usage, and geographical location,
and the sorted data was applied to Esri GIS ArcMapTM 10.8.1.