Informal and Formal Trail Monitoring Protocols and Baseline Conditions: Acadia National Park
Marion JL. 2011. Informal and Formal Trail Monitoring Protocols and Baseline Conditions: Acadia National Park. Virginia Tech, College of Natural Reousrces, Dep. of Forest Resources, & Env. Conservation, Blacksburg, VA.
" Acadia National Park, with 35,000 acres and 2,227,000 visits in 2009, is one of the most intensively visited National Parks. Such high visitation on a relatively small island land base poses a threat to the protection of nationally significant natural, cultural, and recreational resources. This report presents research on evaluating and mitigating visitor-related impacts to the park’s natural resources while providing critical data to support the application of the visitor experience resource protection framework to establish visitor carrying capacities. Research includes the development and application of trail condition assessment and monitoring protocols to approximately 120 miles of formal (designated) trails on Mount Desert Island, development and refinement of procedures for a GPS-based inventory of informal (visitor-created) trails, an inventory of the extent of trampling impacts and the success of area closures on soils and vegetation at the summit of Cadillac Mountain, and the experimental application and evaluation of educational and site management actions to reduce selected high-priority trail-related visitor impact problems. This report includes only data from the formal and informal trail monitoring portion of this program of research.". STUDY LOCATIONS:/ MOUNT DESERT ISLAND.
- Type
- Unpublished Report
- Authors
- Marion, Jeffrey
- Date of Issue
- 2011-05
- Units
- ACAD
- Keywords
- Assessment, Behavior, Cultural resource (inventory, Inventory, Inventory & Monitoring, management), Monitoring, Mount Desert Island, Recreation, Research Methods, Terrestrial, Trails, Visitor Impacts, Visitor Use, Visitors