Managing Tourism and Environment—Trail Erosion, Thresholds of Potential Concern and Limits of Acceptable Change

Abstract

Natural area tourism may contribute to deterioration in biophysical environments important for sustainable conservation of biodiversity and/or historically significant sites. Levels of protection within the IUCN guidelines provide general descriptors of desirable outcomes, and the Limits of Acceptable Change (LAC) management tool has often been implicitly applied. This article presents an initial attempt to assess the value of Thresholds of Potential Concern (TPC) relative to LAC as management frameworks for protected areas, using the example of trail width as an indicator of visitor impacts on vegetation, soil, water and, potentially, visitor safety. Visitor preferences relating to trail width were incorporated when applying the TPC and LAC principles. Sections of three walking trails in a high-visitation national park near Sydney, Australia, were measured at ~10.7 m intervals: the mean trail widths were 1.6 m, 1.8 m and 2.14 m. Of the 115 recreationists surveyed, 16% of those having the greatest tolerance towards management interventions (‘Non-purist’ wilderness category) viewed a trail ≥ 2 m wide as acceptable, but 96% of ‘Purists’ nominated a maximum of ≤1.5 m. The TPC was found to provide a broad strategy for identification, assessment and grading of multiple biophysical thresholds within an ecological framework. Combined with stakeholder information, the TPC allows for timely, proactive and calibrated management responses to maintaining biophysical and social sustainability.

Water Erosion Processes on the Geotouristic Trails of Serra da Bocaina National Park Coast, Rio de Janeiro State, Brazil

“…Soil trampling on trails for public use, for example, is a human activity that causes soil degradation and occurrence of these processes, especially when these actions are carried out in an intensive and disorderly way. These activities corroborate with the alteration of the characteristic physicochemical and biological changes in the soil, which, in turn, modify the hydraulic and edaphic dynamics, since, in addition to reducing organic matter levels, porosity values, and water infiltration rates, they cause an increase in bulk density, runoff volume, and soil loss due to erosion [7][8][9][10].…”

Ecological Carrying Capacity Estimation of the Trails in a Protected Area: Integrating a Path Analysis Model and the Stakeholders’ Evaluation

“…In the limits of acceptable change (LAC) planning systems, consensus among the affected groups about proposed actions is important for implementing protected area management strategies [5,46]. Empirical studies commonly adopted the framework to determine recreation carrying capacity, either from a social perspective (e.g., [47,48]) or an ecological perspective (e.g., [49]). However, there is a lack of studies examining the direct and indirect relationships and the influence of landscape-level conditions while evaluating ecological recreational carrying capacity.…”

Agent-Based Modelling in Visitor Management of Protected Areas

“…The poor condition of the trail infrastructures and their low capacity in relation to the number of visitors leads not only to their accelerated erosion [60] but also to parallel paths, the movement of visitors completely off-trail and the trampling of trail surroundings [61,62]. The system concept in its synergistic form is another important basis for considering how to design the visitor management of protected areas.…”

“…The poor condition of the trail infrastructures and their low capacity in relation to the number of visitors leads not only to their accelerated erosion [60] but also to parallel paths, the movement of visitors completely off-trail and the trampling of trail surroundings [61,62].…”