title: The association of trail use with weather-related factors on an urban greenway.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To study the association between weather-related measures and objectively measured trail use across 3 seasons.
  
  
  BACKGROUND
  Weather has been reported as a barrier to outdoor physical activity (PA), but previous studies have explained only a small amount of the variance in PA using weather-related measures.
  
  
  METHODS
  The dependent variable of this study was trail use measured as mean hourly trail counts by an infrared trail counter located on a greenway. Each trail count represents 1 person breaking the infrared beam of the trail counter. Two sources of weather-related measures were obtained by a site-specific weather station and a public domain weather source.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Temperature, relative humidity, and precipitation were significantly correlated with trail counts recorded during daylight hours. More precise hourly weather-related measures explained 42% of the variance in trail counts, regardless of the weather data source with temperature alone explaining 18% of the variance in trail counts. After controlling for all seasonal and weekly factors, every 1°F increase in temperature was associated with an increase of 1.1 trail counts/hr up to 76°F, at which point trail use began to slightly decrease.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Weather-related factors have a moderate association with trail use along an urban greenway.
authors.affiliation: Dept of Exercise, Sport, and Leisure Studies, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA.
authors.forename: Ryan A
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Burchfield
authors.forename: Eugene C
authors.initials: EC
authors.lastname: Fitzhugh
authors.forename: David R
authors.initials: DR
authors.lastname: Bassett
mesh_terms: D016001:Confidence Intervals; D004779:Environment Design; D015438:Health Behavior; D006293:Health Promotion / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D009043:Motor Activity / Q000502:physiology*; D016012:Poisson Distribution; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D013696:Temperature; D014505:Urban Population; D016138:Walking / Q000502:physiology*; D014887:Weather