Assessment Impacts of Recreational Trail Use on Urban Forests

Phanuel Nana-Yao Gade

Master's thesis

Abstract:

Trails are largely considered as a basic infrastructure that provide access to remnant forests areas, which often serve as popular sites for outdoor recreational activities such as; mountain biking, marathon racing and nature tour. With the high population growth in cities, increase in outdoor recreational participation is expected to hike in such natural areas. This can result to severe impacts on trails being; erosion, extensive trail widening and formation of comprehensive braided networks of trails whiles evidencing tread condition problems such as; horse manure or exposed roots. These impacts could ultimately contribute to vegetation fragmentation, habitat destruction, edge effect and introduction of exotic species hence species diversity is pronounced. The study is specifically concerned with assessment of impacts of recreational trail use on urban forest using six (6) formal trails from three popular urban forests in Prague; Bohnické a Draháňské údolí, Ďáblický háj and Wild Sarka urban forests. Two approaches were adopted; Point sampling was used to section the entire trails into 50 m segments and their potential indicators; informal trails (IT), secondary trails (ST), trail width (TW) and maximum incision (MIC), which represents the bio-physical properties of the trails, were documented while walking every 50 m along the entire trail system. After, field assessment of the tread substrates as a proportion of transect width which are used to describe the typical trail system as mutually exclusive tread condition categories were also observed and assessed from 100 m of each segments of all the entire trails. Three potential trail impact indicators were tested and the result; (TW) = (p <0.009) informal trails (IT) = (p <0.001) and maximum incision (MIC) = (p <0.002) indicating a significant impact of recreational trail use on urban forest. The result was also used to assess all the entire trail system and it shows that Bohnické a Draháňské údolí blue trail experience more impact from users and has the tendency to face severe degradation if there is less intensive management action. Although there was evidence of some managerial actions, yet no clear consistency exists between impact development and intensive trail management. Therefore, the methodology used for this study will serve as a protocol for periodic assessment of impacts that may occur on urban forest trails, whiles future studies would try to focus on spatial data on local physical properties to improve more reliable model of different factors influencing urban forest trails in Czech Republic and to understand the complexity that exist between different outdoor activities and factors influencing trail degradation. These Spatial attributes would include the location, arrangement, and lineal extent of all informal trails (ITs).

Abstract:

Trails are largely considered as a basic infrastructure that provide access to remnant forests areas, which often serve as popular sites for outdoor recreational activities such as; mountain biking, marathon racing and nature tour. With the high population growth in cities, increase in outdoor recreational participation is expected to hike in such natural areas. This can result to severe impacts on trails being; erosion, extensive trail widening and formation of comprehensive braided networks of trails whiles evidencing tread condition problems such as; horse manure or exposed roots. These impacts could ultimately contribute to vegetation fragmentation, habitat destruction, edge effect and introduction of exotic species hence species diversity is pronounced. The study is specifically concerned with assessment of impacts of recreational trail use on urban forest using six (6) formal trails from three popular urban forests in Prague; Bohnické a Draháňské údolí, Ďáblický háj and Wild Sarka urban forests. Two approaches were adopted; Point sampling was used to section the entire trails into 50 m segments and their potential indicators; informal trails (IT), secondary trails (ST), trail width (TW) and maximum incision (MIC), which represents the bio-physical properties of the trails, were documented while walking every 50 m along the entire trail system. After, field assessment of the tread substrates as a proportion of transect width which are used to describe the typical trail system as mutually exclusive tread condition categories were also observed and assessed from 100 m of each segments of all the entire trails. Three potential trail impact indicators were tested and the result; (TW) = (p <0.009) informal trails (IT) = (p <0.001) and maximum incision (MIC) = (p <0.002) indicating a significant impact of recreational trail use on urban forest. The result was also used to assess all the entire trail system and it shows that Bohnické a Draháňské údolí blue trail experience more impact from users and has the tendency to face severe degradation if there is less intensive management action. Although there was evidence of some managerial actions, yet no clear consistency exists between impact development and intensive trail management. Therefore, the methodology used for this study will serve as a protocol for periodic assessment of impacts that may occur on urban forest trails, whiles future studies would try to focus on spatial data on local physical properties to improve more reliable model of different factors influencing urban forest trails in Czech Republic and to understand the complexity that exist between different outdoor activities and factors influencing trail degradation. These Spatial attributes would include the location, arrangement, and lineal extent of all informal trails (ITs).

Keywords

Outdoor recreational impacts, urban forest trails, trail impact indicators, vegetation, trail degradation

Keywords

urban forest trails, trail impact indicators, vegetation, Outdoor recreational impacts, trail degradation

Language used: English

Date on which the thesis was submitted / produced: 19. 4. 2016

Thesis defence

• Supervisor: doc. Peter Kumble, Ph.D.
• Reader: Luis Carlos Neto Monteiro, Ing.

Czech University of Life Sciences Prague

Faculty of Environmental Sciences

Master programme / field:
Engineering Ecology / Nature Conservation