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arXiv · 2011.03332

The fractal dimension of the Appalachian Trail

Brian Skinner
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Abstract

The Appalachian Trail (AT) is a 2193-mile-long hiking trail in the eastern United States. The trail has many bends and turns at different length scales, which gives it a nontrivial fractal dimension. Here I use GPS data from the Appalachian Trail Conservancy to estimate the fractal dimension of the AT. I find that, at length scales between $\sim 20$ m and $\sim 100$ km, the trail has a well-defined "divider dimension" of $\approx 1.08$. This dimension can be used to estimate the true hiking distance between two points, given the distance as estimated from a map with finite spatial resolution (e.g., Google Maps).

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Brian Skinner. 2020-10-25. The fractal dimension of the Appalachian Trail. https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.03332

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