Designing recreational trails in Sarigol National Park and Protected Area, Iran

Access paths to natural attractions in protected areas must be designed and developed considering their impacts on the environment. Visitors' movement in the areas where are highly sensitive to soil erosion may cause destructive impacts on trails such as widening, increasing susceptibility to erosion, and damaging surrounding vegetation. This research aims to suggest a sustainable trail network (off-road vehicles and hiking trails) in Sarigol National Park and Protected Area,

 The study has been carried out based on the least-cost path algorithm, and comparing the results with existing recreation trails. The required field information including the width of 431 trails and 15 environmental factors affecting the trail width was obtained through the study area. Analysis of Covariance has been used for estimating the potential of pathwidth expansion. The accuracy of the model was assessed by root mean square error which is 29cm for hiking trails and 126cm for off-road vehicles trails.

One optimized off-road vehicles trail and one optimized hiking trails in the study are were suggested using degradation map and least cost patch model. The findings of the present study indicated that existing paths are located in areas with high susceptibility to widening because of crowding.