• Journal of The Geomorphological Association of Korea
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.103-115
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• 2017

This paper shows the types of deteriorated hiking trails and degrading factors at three Great Walks such as Tongariro Alpine Crossing, Routeburn Track and Kepler Track in New Zealand. The deteriorated trails could be classified into gullying, widening, narrowing, branching and sidewall erosion. Department of Conservation carefully manages overland flows on trails for preventing surface erosion, thus the Great Walks show only a minor problem of gully on trails which is usually active in a mountainous area. Widening and branching of trails caused by tread erosion are not also developed due to the restriction of visitors as well as the management of rainwash. However, despite the detailed maintenance and prevention of an overuse of trails, some trails traversing steep slopes in a alpine zone under a periglacial environment are severely degraded along their sidewalls. It suggests that a unvegetated sidewall of trails has to be strictly managed in an early stage of occurrence and a slope-traversing section should be selected with more consideration when establishing a route of hiking trails.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Environmental Restoration Technology
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.81-89
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• 2016

This study aims to understand the relationship between visitors and the degradation of natural resources in Bukhansan national park. We analyzed the trend of the number of visitors, destruction of natural resources and decrease of biodiversity per year. We further compared three types of trails, heavily-used trails and rarely-used trails and a trail with limited access, regarding the degree of destruction in the National Park through a field survey. Our result showed that increasing number of visitors had direct and indirect impact on the destruction of natural resources in the National Park. The direct impact came from visitors' excessive use of trails. Naturally, increasing number of visitors caused an immoderate use of natural resources. Physical degradation such as exposure of tree root, poor drainage of trails, trail erosion was more severe than other types of trails. Decreasing biodiversity or mild disturbance around trails is the indirect impact such as broken bough, worn-bark in rarely-used trails. Destruction scale greatly increased as the number of visitors increased. Real-named reservation system helped to prevent trails from degradation. Our result calls for the need of controlling the number of visitors to Bukhansan National Park to mitigate the degradation. We recommend dispersing visitors from the heavily-used trails to other trails and implementing real-named reservation system in the rarely-used trails for the effective management of the national park.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Rural Architecture
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.45-52
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to investigate safety and dangerous awareness of environment on walking trails. For this purpose, questionnaire survey are carried out by people who had experience using walking trails during 2016. It is evaluated that environments of walking trails located inside big cities are inferior than ones located in small and medium-sized cities and countryside in air pollution, bed smell, water pollution, noise, and waste. Needs about management and number installed public restroom are high for hygienic environment of walking trails. With waste treatment, users of 2.4 percentage are showed improper behavior that they left their rubbish at the place out of view but others bring their trash. Accident likelihood is highly appreciated and possibility of physical accident like slipping is showed at the highest. The reasons of accident on walking trails are responded with carelessness of walkers and improper of installation or management of safety facility at the most. For safety environment of walking trails, needs of installation of safety fences and notices of dangerous area are requested. In order to separate prevention from paths of walking trails, signposts are needed at visual clearness, maintenance, installation with proper interval and location, and correct contents. Respondents of 2.4 percentage have experiences of accident on walking trails and physical accident like slipping is occurred at the most.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.1-14
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• 2000

The purpose of this study is to propose remedial devices through the analysis on the operation status of nature trails in the nine National Parks in Korea. To accomplish these goals, the field survey for the nature trail facilities and their nature environmental conditions and a questionnaire survey also had been done, and 1,102 samples have been collected. Nature trails are usually located where the visitors re concentrated for a certain season or year-round, and ease of the visits guaranteed. However, since most of trails are located along the valley, the courses have disadvantage of passing in a single trail. Also, many trails are using former tracking courses, and the environmental conditions are not satisfactory due to the damages incurred by the visitors. Since nature trails are still on the introductory stage, basic tactics such as the design of courses, construction methods, management skills needs further improvements. As the Natural Parks Act does not have any clear definition of nature trails, it invokes the definition of tracking course instead, which in turn hinders the development of the nature trails. The nature trail system was just introduced to Korean National Parks and a pioneer in the Korea. Therefore, when provincial and urban recreational parks wish to introduce the environmental education programs within each park system, nature trails in national parks can be performed as a role model. Further improvements should be made within the such fields as preliminary natural ecological survey, lacks of professional designers for the facilities, lacks of interpreter and interpretation within nature trails.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Rural Architecture
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.1-9
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• 2018

This research aimed to identify walking trails' purpose of its use and the factors that influence the selection. For this, a survey targeting the walking trail users was conducted in 2016 to question the research aim stated above. The mean number of walking trail usage in a month was 2.51 times and the duration of use ranged from one to ten hours, with the average of 2.5 hours. The main reason for the usage was to maintain physical health and the following was for mental relaxation, thus showing more than 90% of the people concerned with physical and mental health. Walking trails near the residences had the greatest percentage and trails that include mountains, rivers, seas and lakes were the following. Trails near historical locations or countryside showed a lower percentage. The choices showed relevance to the proximity as a standard of selection. The next highest percentage was the convenience of transportation. Additionally, people that access the trails three or more times were inclined to be influenced by the installation of exercising equipment. The aspect of facilities showed that the place for relaxation was a significant selection factor such as bathrooms for 20s to 30s and exercising equipments for people older than 50. To access the walking trails, people reach it by automobiles, public transport, walking and bicycles and out of these, automobiles had the highest percentage.

• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.106-111
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• 2005

To investigate the vegetation structure of trail edges in Woraksan National Park, thirty nine plots on the five trails were surveyed. Dominant species in the tree layer on trails were Quercus mongolica, Pinus densiflora and Q. variabilis, but in the shrub layer, Lespedeza maximowiczii was a dominant species on the all trails except the Dongchang section even though five trails have different situations and use of strength. The similarity index between five trails was $41.6\5%\~66.50\%$. The edge species among trails in Woraksan National Park have a similar pattern.

• Spatial Information Research
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.1-7
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• 2012

Hiking on the mountain is one of the most popular recreations for modern people, but many people have trouble because they select a wrong hiking trails with their own ability and this w ill be just a danger accident. It was suggested that slope analysis of hiking trails using GIS for solving this problem, and the proposed method is faster and easier than the other method. Also the slope of many hiking trails which have same destination was classified by analysing and comparing, then citizen can choose right hiking trails with their own ability.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural Science
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.319-325
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• 2012

This study investigated the user's attitude to the nature trail called Gubulgil in Gunsan reservoir area and evaluated the quality of user's satisfaction of the trails and their facilities by importance-performance analysis (IPA). User's evaluation was achieved through questionnaire survey and total 283 pieces of subjects were used for the analysis. The results are as follows. Firstly, importance value of circularity of trails was very high, and it has great implication to ordinary trails which connect ecological, historical and cultural spots routinely and linearly. Secondly, through the IPA, relatively dissatisfied attributes were parking lots, direction boards, storytelling, convenient facilities and encountering of wildlife. Expansion of parking lots can cause the environmental disruption, so running a shuttle service from Gunsan downtown to the reservoir at weekends can be more reasonable. In case of ecological and historical information delivery, softwares like storytelling contents with sense of realism as well as hardwares of informative signboards are very important in nature trails. Encountering wildlife in trails is fascinating experience but it means visitors may disturb wildlife habitats. So route design should be done very carefully not to intrude their territories.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.169-179
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• 2003

The hardness and physical properties of soils were measured in hiking trails of Mt. Halla and Darangshiorum in Jeju Island to examine the characteristics and formative factors of an aquiclude induced by human trampling. The soil hardness, being generally the highest on trails, decreases outward and shows the lowest on adjacent slopes in a natural condition. The bulk density and solid phase also demonstrates a similar tendency, then implying that the aquiclude occurs in the central part of trails. Although the formation of a hard layer in trails is fundamentally attributed to human trampling, the environmental factors such as landform, lithology, soil and vegetation play a role in the occurrence of the aquiclude. Soil compaction varies with the gradient and location of trails which affects a transport and deposition of soil particles to produce a hard layer. Soil compaction also depends on the physical properties of soils including the soil texture largely affected by lithology. Vegetation is not directly related with the formation of a hard layer, but affects its dimensions through an enlargement rate of bare trails depending on the response and resistance of plants to human trampling.

• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.21-28
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• 2015

This study examined the habitat status of wild birds at closed-trails and the control group of opened-trails in the national park of the Baekdudaegan mountains. After evaluating each area based on this, it's aimed at being utilized as basic data for future national park management and opening of trails. Upon field investigations and analyzing existing literary materials, it was found that there were a total of 76 bird species living around the trails. Among them, it was confirmed that 60 species can breeding and 10 species are protected by law. Upon assessing the scores of each area according to the evaluation standards of this study, Area I had 7 scores, area II had 13 scores, area III had 5 scores, and area IV had 16 scores, showing that the control group open-trail area IV between Jeongryeongchi and Seongsamjae had the highest score, and that area III of Wolyeongdae~Chotdaebong~Daeyasan~Miljae~Wolyeongdae had the lowest score. Evaluation of closed-trail according to wild bird species (Avifauna) was attempted in this study, but there were more bird species living in open-trails, while also having higher evaluation scores. Therefore, if opening trail is needed in the future due to excessive desires of visitors or inevitable social demands, it is judged that various environmental factors including mammals highly affected by people should be evaluated to open up the sector with the lowest score. Also, it is judged that through methods such as reservation systems, the number of visitors should be controlled or night-time hikes should be prohibited so that nocturnal wildlife can freely use the trails.