A months-long hike of the Appalachian Trail often involve long-term preparation and life-altering decisions. Would-be hikers leverage institutional knowledge from literature and online forums to ...physically and mentally prepare for such an arduous hike. Their use of social platforms provide useful insights on motivations for undertaking the thru-hike, how they deal with unexpected conditions on the trail and understand choices made in conditions of scarcity. By analyzing over 100,000 Reddit posts and comments in r/AppalachianTrail and applying a Sense of Community theory, we sought to understand hikers' identity as community members, how their emotional and practical needs are met, and how they evolve. We found that the role and language of thru-hikers change as they progress from pre-hike, on-hike, and post-hike stages, from a questioner early on, to an expert post-hike. We conclude with design recommendations to support offline communities online.
Willing Buyer, Willing Seller Kotut, Lindah; Stelter, Timothy L.; Horning, Michael ...
Companion Proceedings of the 2020 ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work,
01/2020
Conference Proceeding
There is an increased sensitivity by people about how companies collect information about them, and how this information is packaged, used and sold. This perceived lack of control is highlighted by ...the helplessness of users of various platforms in managing or halting what data is collected from/about them. In a future where users have wrested control of their data and have the autonomy to decide what information is collected, how it is used and most importantly, how much it is worth, a new market emerges. This design fiction considers possible steps prescient companies would take to meet these demands, such as providing third-party subscription platforms offering personal data trade as a service. These services would provide a means for transparent transactions that preserve an owner's control over their data; allowing them to individually make decisions about what data they avail for sale, and the amount of compensation they would accept in trade.
This investigation examined the effect of activity involvement and place attachment on leisure satisfaction among three groups of hikers along the Appalachian Trail (AT). The three groups differed in ...the type of setting they perceived they had visited along the AT; wilderness, semi-wilderness, and undeveloped recreation area (p<.05). It was hypothesized that the opportunity to enjoy the activity and setting would be sources of satisfaction among respondents. It was also hypothesized that these effects would be strongest among wilderness hikers. Results indicated that only the attraction dimension of activity involvement and place identity dimension of place attachment were significant predictors of hikers' satisfaction (p<.05). Further, the type of setting visited did not impact the strength of these effects. These results illustrate that the intrinsic elements of the activity and setting can be a source of satisfaction alone.
The Appalachian Trail (AT) is among the crown jewels of hiking trails worldwide. An opportunity to design the maps of the AT in Maine was more than just another job—as Maine residents and avid ...outdoorsmen we felt a personal responsibility, and honor, to take on this task. We embarked on a digital odyssey of sorts, manipulating terrain models and referencing existing paper sources, all the while designing with a strong humanistic element. These maps will be used to plan, attempt, and complete adventures in what some consider to be the most stunning trail landscape in New England. The project, similar to the trail, offered some unexpected challenges. This paper chronicles our journey along the design and production paths of Maine’s Appalachian Trail.
Rather than dwelling on why too many men don't succeed in college, trekker Karen Arnold examines the features of an experience in which many men do excel: the long hike from Georgia to Maine. ...Educators can learn why accomplishing this feat may be more rewarding than college.
Approximately 2000 thru-hikers attempt to complete the 2160-mile Appalachian Trail in its entirety each year; among them are hikers with specialized needs. The purpose of this qualitative study was ...to investigate the experiences of long-distance hikers with specialized needs on the
Appalachian Trail and in the surrounding towns. Seven hikers were interviewed for an understanding of their experience, constraints, and motivations. Five salient themes emerged: (1) importance of people as support; (2) use of adaptations; (3) knowing oneself; (4) determination; and (5) viewing
the Appalachian Trail as a challenge. Constraint and motivational theories were then applied to these themes for better understanding of the hikers' experiences. Results suggest that intrinsic motivation and lack of intrapersonal constraints were strong determinants for success. Recommendations
for further research are provided in the areas of tourism, individuals with specialized needs, and leisure.
The Appalachian Trail traverses 3300 km (2050 miles) of the Appalachian Mountains from Maine to Georgia in the eastern USA. Except for the Cumberland Valley (the Great Valley of the Ridge and Valley ...region of the Appalachian Mountains) in Pennsylvania, and a few other valley crossings, the Trail passes primarily along forested ridges. The Cumberland Valley is the longest valley crossing of the Trail—26 km (16 miles) of intensively cultivated prime farmland undergoing residential and commercial development. To secure public ownership of the Trail through this urbanizing landscape, the US Department of the Interior, through the National Park Service, acquired a 600 ha (1500 acre) corridor through the Cumberland Valley to be managed and maintained by the volunteers of the Appalachian Trail Conference. This study was developed by a project team from the Department of Landscape Architecture of The Pennsylvania State University, for the Appalachian Trail Conference, as a set of planning, design, and management recommendations for the newly acquired trail corridor. The method of study involves developing (1) an understanding of the Trail, its history, and its users; (2) a general understanding of the natural and cultural conditions of the region; (3) a more specific inventory, analysis, and assessment of the natural and cultural elements of the trail corridor. This process reveals a corridor landscape containing the interpretable evidence of 250 years of agrarian landscape history and a diverse set of physical environments and biotic communities that have been fragmented by that land use.
The two central ideas explored in this paper that underlie the planning and design of the Trail greenway across the Cumberland Valley are, first, the conservation and interpretation of the cultural landscape, and, second, the reduction of habitat fragmentation and enhancement of biological diversity. The product of the planning and design of the corridor land is a set of recommendations intended to direct future actions within the valley corridor. The cultural landscape recommendations focus on maintaining the fabric and interrelationships of the cultural landscape by including a complete representation of both the structural and biotic cultural resources. The ecological recommendations focus on protection of existing natural resources, establishment of forest habitat linkages, and restoration of native plant communities. Finally, two examples of the corridor planning, design, and management study are presented as a case study in greenway planning and design in response to cultural landscape conservation and landscape ecology.
Rooted in a critical dialogue that endeavours to theorize experience in contrast to the colonial impetus, this dissertation explores the lived experience of Appalachian Trail thru-hikers. As a result ...of this disposition, the purpose of this dissertation is to expose the dynamics associated with colonized experiences and empirically research the lived experience of thru-hikers from an ecophenomenological perspective. The subsequent approach views the activities of the lived human body as the process through which the world comes into being. Building on Merleau-Pontian phenomenology, ecophenomenology provides the foundation of the experiential self, and thus underlies the representation of the trail environment as a sensuous field of human activity where one is merged with one's socio-ecological surroundings.
Explication of empirical materials from 27 participant interviews resulted in a wide range of thru-hiking experiences representing the operative essence of Appalachian Trail thru-hiking. The operative essence was identified across 4 broad dimensions: Perseity, Sojourning, Kinship, and Wild Imbrication. Each dimension comprised a dialectic which emerged from interview excerpts both congruent with and in contrast to wilderness ideology. Further exploration of wilderness ideals resulted in thru-hikers negotiating tensions related to ideological wilderness meanings and their own actual thru-hiking experiences. This negotiation allowed a broader conception of wilderness to be illustrated as a continuum of meaningful experiences. In addition, ecoliteracy emerged as an experientially driven learning process whereby thru-hikers negotiate alternative meanings of wilderness with ideological meanings. The implications for experiential and wilderness related research along with management concerns are discussed.
A 918-km section of the Appalachian National Scenic Trail from the West Virginia -Maryland border to the Massachusetts-Vermont border was surveyed for the presence of Ixodes scapularis Say. The trail ...and its edges were drag-sampled during 4 hikes between May and October 1991. Trips were designed to survey areas of the Appalachian Trail when I. scapularis might be questing and to revisit states ende mic for Lyme disease during differing times. After sampling for ticks, meteorological and ecological characteristics were measured at each site. In total, 1,776 km of the Appalachian Trail were hiked during 88 d and resulted in sampling 489 sites. All life stages of Ixodes scapularis (n = 46) were collected from 21 sites within a 331-km range of the Appalachian Trail between Salisbury, CT, to Delaware Water Gap, PA. This segment of Appalachian Trail is easily accessible to a large urban population and should be posted with tick warning signs to alert the public to the presence of I. scapularis
In this paper we describe a framework of GIS-based system for automated processing of mass remote sensing and geospatial data products as a step in preparation of data for the needs of end users. In ...particular we employed the GDAL data model and python and GDAL Library to convert HDF5 format data into standard GIS format. We then batch processed all the data to a targeted data type using python coding. Finally we integrated all related statistics of the data into Microsoft Excel worksheet files or ASCII files use the C# programming language.
