A review of recreational trampling impact on nature trail

Trampling is the most visible and systematically studied mechanism of recreational disturbance on nature trails. The impact of trampling can be classified to resource components such as soil, vegetation, wildlife and water. This paper reviews the selected literature available on recreational trampling impact in ecosystem especially trail, soil and vegetation, the survey, site comparison and experimental methods used to identify the trampling impact and finally, the research gap of trampling study was identified. The research gap found based on the review are the lack of studies related to the impact of seasonal change as most of the recreational trampling studies involves intensity of trail usage, impacts on vegetation and long-term effect of trampling. In addition, there are also reduced number of studies using the qualitative method. Based on this review, research with both field sampling and questionnaire survey including seasonal change as parameters have been proposed. This type of research can be a baseline for limiting the tourist per activity to reduce the impact to nature as well