Understanding Active & Passive Recreational Uses – Part 1

In the discussion of scientific instruments and measuring devices, there are two major categories: active sensors and passive sensors.  Active sensors use some kind of directed energy, whether that be light waves, sound waves or kinetic means to measure properties about an item.   Passive sensors do not emit any energy, but measure the observed item's own emitted energy, again, light waves, sound waves or kinetic means to measure properties of that item.

Some types of instruments can be in either passive or active types. Microscopes can be passively viewing or, like an electron microscope, they can actively view.  Sonar on ships and submarines can do the same, passively listening for other vessels or sending out a “ping” to listen for the echo.

​But when talking about active or passive recreational uses, what is being referred to?  How can one activity be referred to as “active use” and a seemingly similar activity be referred to as “passive use”.  How does this understanding of active and passive recreational use affect mountain biking in urban areas?

​Definitions

The first thing that must be understood is that there is not a nationally accepted or a federal definition for active and passive recreation uses.  This means for your local city or area, there might be some slight differences.

Here is the definition (in whole) from a legal dictionary about what is passive use:

A passive recreation area is generally an undeveloped space or environmentally sensitive area that requires minimal development. Entities such as a parks department may maintain passive recreation areas for the health and well-being of the public and for the preservation of wildlife and the environment. The quality of the environment and "naturalness" of an area is the focus of the recreational experience in a passive recreation area.

Passive recreation may be defined as a non-motorized activity that:
• Offers constructive, restorative, and pleasurable human benefits and fosters appreciation and understanding of open space and its purpose
• Is compatible with other passive recreation uses
• Does not significantly impact natural, cultural, scientific, or agricultural values
• Requires only minimal visitor facilities and services directly related to safety and minimizes passive recreation impacts

​Definitions vary by locality. The following is an example of what falls under the definition of one community's passive recreation area:
• libraries
• 6 conservation reservations
• 10 municipal parking lots
• 18 parks
• 75 traffic islands at 58 locations throughout the Town
• 3 walking paths or parkways
• Police Station grounds
• Town Forest

As you can see, there is squish in this definition.  In fact, it uses a broad definition that one community has to illustrate exactly how large that passive recreational use umbrella could get.  It doesn’t mean every community has a definition that broad, it just means that definitions can be that broad.

Generally, however, these are considered the 3 main tests of a recreational use to determine if it is passive or active:

1. Have no greater impact than other passive uses
2. Use the same recreational facilities as other passive uses
3. Can occur with other passive activities and users simultaneously

To further tease these out, let’s that those three criteria and break them down into the types of items one would think about: infrastructure, maintenance, use, existing environmental alterations, the materials used and effects to wildlife.  To show the difference, we use a table to show a side-by-side comparison of active and passive recreational uses:

Item	Active Use	Passive Use
Infrastructure	Requires specialized infrastructure	Requires no specialized infrastructure
Maintenance	Requires specialized maintenance on said infrastructure; often with fossil fuel burning equipment	Requires no specialized maintenance on said infrastructure; often uses hand tools or human action only
Use	Often requires an exclusive use of the area occupied	Other passive uses can use the area occupied at the same time
Environmental Alterations	Most involve the removal of natural vegetation & topography; often indirectly removing wildlife	Only seeks the removal of natural vegetation & topography as required for infrastructure; limits impact to wildlife
Material Alterations	Often adds non-native or invasive species or materials to a locality	Uses only native and natural species and materials in its use and infrastructure
Wildlife Alterations	Directly or indirectly displaces wildlife	Minimizes any displacement of wildlife; mostly while humans are present in that area

​It should become clear that what makes an activity active or passive isn’t so much the activity itself, but two major factors together: 1) infrastructure, that construction impacts and 2) the impacts of that activity post-construction.  Going back to the 3 main tests of a recreational use, we see this see-saw between, and the balancing of, the infrastructure and usage impacts.  When we start applying that to the items in the table above, we can see how impacts at the time of construction for an active or passive use might be the same, but as time passes, the low impact of the passive use prevents further impacts, thereby allowing the total impacts to be relatively low.

​Simple comparison of infrastructure

​Let’s discuss the infrastructure for two uses (we will get to activities later), side by side, to see how this plays out with real uses than might occur in an urban area.  The first use will be a football field and the second will be trail system.  At this point, let’s not define who will use that trail as that gets into activities, let’s assume it’s a multi-use trail.

Item	Football field	Trail system
Infrastructure	A standard field, without any bleachers is 57,000ft². It requires flat, will drained ground. Attempting to create a combined field for soccer or lacrosse alters the dimensions, increasing size.	A mile of 42” wide trail in a 15% sideslope average location is just under 48” in width with backslope and foreslope. The same area of a football field would be equal to 2.7 miles of trail
Maintenance	At the minimum regular mowing is required. May require irrigation, seeding and fertilizer.	Requires regular inspection and maintenance. Maintenance is mostly preventing safety and erosion issues.
Use	Requires replacing goal equipment for different uses if multiple sports use the same field; only one use at a time can occupy the field.	No changes in the infrastructure are required for different uses. Radically different uses can occur at the same time. However, some special events will make the area single use.
Environmental Alterations	Require some alternations to construct, some of which might quite large. Will require extensive alterations to maintain as grass is mowed.	Alterations to construct required with some soil and vegetation displacement. Post-construction alterations are almost exclusively along the travel path, with most of the disturbed area from construction slowly returning to normal.
Material Alterations	Depending on underlying topography and soils, drainage and other subfield materials would be added. Concrete and metal would be added for fences and goal infrastructure.	Adds signage and some wood/stone features. Generally, concrete and other types of materials are avoided.
Wildlife Alterations	Any wildlife in the area is displaced. Due to the monoculture of the playing area, wildlife will not return. Chemicals (fertilizer, weed killer) would further hurt species in the area.	Some wildlife will be displaced from the trail area immediately. There will be some habitat fragmentation from the trails. However, wildlife will return to the area.

​Clearly, there are some places where it’s no contest, the trail has much lower impacts than the football field.  Yet, in other areas, it’s not so clear.  Where the trail makes up for its initial construction impacts is its low long-term impacts.  Even then, it will never be 100% free of impacts, that is, until humans stop using the trail and it is fully reclaimed.

​This is where it gets interesting

​Obviously, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that a trail system would have less impact than a football field.  Yet, what about the different uses that could occur on that trail?  Are all activities on that trail thereby passive?  And how does this effect mountain biking?
That will be the discussion in Part 2.