Recovery of trailside vegetation from trampling in a tropical rain forest

Abstract

/ Practically no information exists on the impact of human trampling on tropical rain forest vegetation. We studied three trails with varying periods of use and recovery in a tropical rain forest in Costa Rica. Human impact on trailside plants was curvilinearly related to use, as found by other workers in temperate zone vegetation. Recovery in a period of two years and eight months had been rapid, and herbs and seedlings were more abundant along the recovering trail than in undisturbed forest. The results imply that a shifting mosaic of trails, analogous to the mosaic created by light gaps, may be the best management technique to minimize the impact of human visitors in tropical rain forests.Although the literature on the impact of truman trampling on the vegetation and soils along trails is substantial (Kuss and Graefe 1985, Kuss 1986, Cole and Schreiner 1981, none of the hundreds of studies deal with tropical rain forests. Nearly all the published papers were done in the temperate zone, especially in the western United States. Of 348 papers on the subject reviewed by Cole and Schreiner in 1981, every single one came from a north-temperate-zone country, and since then only two have been added from tropical or subtropical regions: the study of Liddle and Thyer (1986) in subtropical eucalyptus forest in Australia, and the work of Jim (1987) on the parks of Hong Kong.With the development of ecotourism leading to in-

Identifying and assessing ecotourism visitor impacts at eight protected areas in Costa Rica and Belize

“…Boo (1990) listed visitor impacts affecting selected protected areas in both countries based on qualitative case study assessments. A few isolated studies of trail and wildlife impacts have also been conducted in Costa Rica (Boucher et al 1991;Jacobsen & Lopez 1994;Wallin & Harden 1996).…”

Intensive research activity alters short‐term seedling dynamics in a tropical forest

“…Trampling may increase mortality and reduce recruitment of seedlings and small saplings, biasing estimates of population dynamic rates. In addition, because species differ in their ability to tolerate and recover from physical damage (Boucher et al 1991;Ickes et al 2003;Yorks et al 1997), trampling by researchers could potentially cause shifts in the structure and composition of vegetation.…”

Effective Use of Trails for Assessing Terrestrial Salamander Abundance and Detection: A Case Study at Great Smoky Mountains National Park

“…Our study examined the effectiveness of trails as sampling tools, which are considered to have less impact than hard edges, such as edges from timber harvest cutblocks (edge between an open area and forest cover) or roads. For example, documentation of negative effects of roads and road edges on amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals is frequent and includes direct mortality, modification of behavior, increased nest predation, and reduced abundance (e.g., Trombulak and Frissell 2000;Fahrig and Rytwinski 2009;Butler et al 2013 (Zabinski and Gannon 1997) and vegetation cover (Boucher et al 1991). Further, disturbance by off-trail visitors has been found to significantly alter behavior of wildlife in protected land in the United States (Taylor and Knight 2003;Stankowich 2008).…”