Abstract
El Chaltén is a village created in 1985 within Los Glaciares National Park, in Argentine Patagonia. Since 1985, this urban center has experienced rapid development due to immigration and nature tourism. We use the concept of naturbanization to investigate why and how El Chaltén was created, who are its inhabitants and visitors, and above all, what are the socio-environmental dynamics and impacts of the resulting urbanization process within a national park. To answer these questions, we use a mixed methodology that includes fieldwork, quantitative and qualitative interviews, and remotely sensed data time series based on the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index. Although our research finds limited negative environmental impacts caused by the creation of a village inside a national park, further urbanization can endanger the fragile balance between a growing population and tourism demand on the one side and effective conservation on the other.
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Acknowledgements
We thank the Franconian Geographical Society FGG for the financial support. Our Gratitude goes to the inhabitants of El Chaltén for their hospitality and generous participation in the interviews. We especially thank Romina Bernard, Don Guerra, Daniel Rodriguez, Raúl Andrade, Alejandro Caparrós, Dante Ardenghi, and all those anonymous tourists who shared their precious time with us. We are grateful to Marina llg, Nina Knode, Jana Peters, Franziska Wirth, and Lilian Reiss for their enthusiastic assistance during fieldwork.
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Zipfel, A.G., Vanselow, K.A. (2023). El Chaltén, Argentine Patagonia: A Successful Combination of Conservation and Tourism?. In: López, S. (eds) Socio-Environmental Research in Latin America. The Latin American Studies Book Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22680-9_9
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