Sustained Flight: Ecological Disc Golf Course Design, A Guide

95 pages. Committee chair: Chris EnrightDisc golf is a rapidly growing sport all over the world; it is played like traditional golf, throwing a small frisbee, or disc, instead of hitting a ball, and playing a course which weaves through forested and other natural areas instead of across a manicured lawn. The attraction to the sport is attributed to its accessibility, the low-impact exercise opportunity it offers, time spent in nature, and its family friendly factor. During the last 10-15 years disc golf has experienced exponential growth, and course installation has grown alongside this increase in popularity. However, lack of official guidelines and regulation have led to poor course design decisions in terms of ecological preservation, leading to habitat degradation and other environmental damage. This project explores disc golf course design through the lens of environmental preservation. A merging of the fields of science and design will be at the forefront of the methodology developed, with the aim of demonstrating the importance and practicality of using scientific data to inform design in ecologically sensitive areas, where disc golf courses are often located. This project documents incidences of observed environmental degradation occurring on disc golf courses and then uses a landscape analysis methodology to develop a set of course design principles which aim to mitigate said degradation. Those principles are then merged with existing design principles to produce a new course plan in Oakridge, Oregon