BACKGROUND Little is known about the associations between natural amenities, recreation facility density, and obesity, at a national level. Therefore, the purpose of this paper was to examine associations between county-level natural amenities, density of recreation facilities, and obesity prevalence among United States counties. METHODS Data were obtained from a compilation of sources within...

The willingness of landowners to allow fee-based recreational use of their land was investigated using data obtained from a mailed questionnaire sent to landowners in the Delta region of Louisiana. Previous studies have identified that landowners often chose not to engage in recreational leasing due to liability concerns. An institutional change that reduces liability risk to landowners may inc...

The ski industry is often perceived as having a negative impact on sensitive alpine and subalpine communities. However, empirical evidence of such impacts is lacking. We reviewed the available literature from the last 35 years to quantify the reported effects of winter recreation on faunal communities. Overall, using one-sample binomial tests ('sign tests') we found that the effects of all type...

INTRODUCTION Approximately one in five Ontario children show symptoms of significant mental health problems. These children exhibit impairments at home, at school and in the community, often with long-lasting effects. Involvement in structured community-based recreation programs may be protective for these children; however, they often encounter multiple barriers to participation (e.g., facilit...

What should be monitored and who decides has been debated for as long as recreation ecology has been with us. The early work on planning frameworks advocates consulting with visitors to determine what conditions are important to them and then derive resource and social indicators from this information. Any associated standards are then similarly set with visitors’ input. At the same time, recre...

Between September 2008 and September 2009, data were collected with a Garmin Oregon 300 recreation-grade GPS receiver nearly every day, under a variety of environmental conditions. Horizontal position locations were collected in a young pine stand, an older pine stand, and a hardwood stand, each located within the Whitehall Forest GPS Test Site in Athens, GA. The purpose of this study was to de...

BACKGROUND we sought to assess how impairment (physiological/psychological) and disability (social/environmental) are associated with physical and leisure/recreation activity levels and quality of life (QOL) in people with moderate/severe multiple sclerosis (MS). We conducted a cross-sectional survey at the MS Comprehensive Care Center, Stony Brook University Hospital, Stony Brook, NY, of a con...