Authors: Laanisto, Lauri; Härm, Ly;Jaksi, Piia;

Despite the growing popularity of nature tourism, we have very limited comparable knowledge of how tourism affects nature, and what are the effects in different habitats and trail types. Tourism related effects on nature are typically studied in single locations or only for a few specific, typically local flagship species. This approach makes it difficult to compare the effects in different locations, and examine the role of potential mechanisms of how human activities affect nature in nature tourism context. The focus of our study was on the vegetation in nature trails – we wanted to know whether the visitor´s load on nature trails has affected the diversity and composition of vegetation. We selected 20 trails from all over Estonia, representing trails in forest, wetland and grassland habitats. The results show that plant diversity along the trails is negatively affected by visitor´s load in both forest and open habitat trails, and there were also considerable changes in vegetation composition. Thus, the negative effects on plant diversity appear even in boardwalk trails that go through species-poor wetlands, where stepping outside the trail is unlikely. Geographically and culturally wider sampling in different habitats and trails would show whether such trends are universal.