Educational trail

A nature trail, also learning path is a groomed hiking or trail, which runs along like a station of scientific or cultural remarkable objects through the countryside. He can convey, for example, knowledge of flora and fauna, soil science, geology, mining, ecology or cultural history. Longer routes connecting more spaced natural phenomena or structures together are referred to as Themenwanderweg.

For a better view of the conditions associated with those objects Facts are at stations - depending on the topic - Display boards or other representations attached. These can be: Note and explanatory signs, photos and pictures, maps or plans, displays and models, slide, sound or multimedia tools, equipment for experimentation and the like. The routes are serviced regularly.

Trails with thematically strong eingegrenztem content will - among other things, depending on the regional or national common parlance - the " theme paths " or " theme trails " called.

The sense of an educational pathway is the transfer of knowledge and expansion, partly an experience of nature, recreation and raising environmental awareness. Often, the stations offer imaginative and interactive ways to experience nature. Occasionally, guided tours with expert guides are offered.

History

The first official trail was created in 1925 through the initiative of a museum director in the Palisades Interstate Park in New York and New Jersey in the United States. 1930, the first nature trail was created in Germany. In the 1950s there was a sudden increase in natural trails in Germany, as the urbanization led to an increasing need for recovery and an increase in car use to a greater mobility. From the 1960s were increasingly established in Germany Nature trails mainly as forest trails for visitor management. They were mostly signs paths that constitute the forest as ecosystem worth protecting in order to channel the tide of seekers of recreation, urban motorists in the natural areas. For this reason, trail trails were initially especially with large parking lots at the forest edge attached. 1970 according to the " European Nature Conservation Year " in Germany, the first Swiss trails have been created. At the beginning of the 1980s, trails were no longer created only in the form of normal signs paths in which knowledge is transmitted only through the written word in Germany, but they turned the perception and experience of nature through the senses into the center. 1998 should have existed in Germany estimates that about 1,000 trails. Of these, 85 % were forest or nature trails, and only 3 % nature trails. After 2000, new media have been increasingly integrated into the trails.

Special forms

In addition, there are planets ways that illustrate the standards of the planets and sculptures ways with artistic merit. End of May 2012 opened Germany's first underwater nature trail in the Baltic Sea Meschendorf at Rerik.