Assessing trail surface erosion and walkability for a sustainable management of mountain trails

Abstract

<p>Trail use by people often causes soil surface erosion on trails. Quantitative assessment of such erosion and the amount of passersby use is essential for the sustainable management of mountain trails, as well as for their future contribution to people's health and well-being. We explore efficient measurement methods of the trail surface using different sensors, including terrestrial lidar (Trimbe TX5) and mobile lidar (Apple iPhone), for quantifying the amount of erosion on the trail surface. The study site is mountain trails at Mt. Yotei in western Hokkaido, Japan. The morphology of small features such as tree roots is more accurately represented with point clouds by terrestrial lidar, but it appears that mobile lidar measurements are more efficient than measurements with the terrestrial lidar. Human flow along hiking trails by GNSS-based tracking big data also shows spatial and temporal patterns of the trail use based on the number of hikers, and the frequency of trail use can be related to soil surface erosion. This case study also demonstrates the potential of low-cost lidar measurement for the quantification of trail walkability and its further applications to other mountainous areas. </p>