engleski

Dosing of physical load for hiking infrastructure users in the forests of the Krka national park

In protected nature areas the visitors may be, due to activities of walking and climbing, elevated temperature and wearing of equipment, exposed to the unwanted influence of physiological stress. Significant additional impact in this has an individual health status, the level of physical fitness, the use of medicaments, the level of hydration and so on. The use of park infrastructure, especially hiking trails, requires increased attention and physical engagement of visitors (especially for length, longitudinal slope, altitude etc.). The stated can result in undesirable consequences for visitors (e.g. injury) and for the management of protected areas (e.g. claim compensation). For assessing the risk of physical (over)load, when overcoming the hiking trail “Niz ploču” in the Krka national park, heart rate measurement method was applied with using the Garmin Forerunner 910XT and metronome BOSS DB-3. Field measurements and data collection were carried out during the summer of 2017. The class of physical load, and the corresponding level of general physical fitness, for each subject were determined by calculating the percent increase in heart rate during the overcoming of hiking trail “Niz ploču”. The research results show the optimal risk assessment matrix with the elaborated Take a Break (TaB) scheme for the specific case study. Suggested TaB scheme for each visitor, based on the age group and the selfdetermined physical fitness, defines a regime for overcoming the trail, where the same includes the type and number of resting points and the minimum duration of the brake/rest in minutes.

forestry, protected area, hiking trail, physical load, heart rate method

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