With the continuing growth of outdoor recreation our natural resources are facing increased use, and degradation. Associated with this is the development of braided roads and trails, and the further widening and migration of existing roads and trails. This process leads to heavy erosion and unsightly scars that will last for years. These new paths are mostly the result of travel while the road or trail is wet or impassable, along with poor judgement of the trail user. In this project we have tried to monitor this phenomena with the use of GPS, photographs, and ground truthing, and attempted to develop an effective resource management approach to this problem with the use of a GIS. Throughout this project we have been in contact with Tread Lightly, Inc., a non-profit organization aimed at encouraging responsible backcountry travel. With their help we have come up with suggestions on how resource degredation can be minimized.
Approximately 20 million off-highway vehicles (OHV's) have been sold to date (Tread Lightly!, 1995). Between 1965 and 1984 backcountry visitor-days increased 275 percent, and continue to increase (Soft Paths, p.14, 1988). Every year hundreds of thousands of mountain bikes, and four wheel drives are sold. The majority of these vehicles find their way onto the 500,000 miles of backcountry roads and trails of this country. Such staggering numbers wear heavy on the natural landscape. New, unplanned trails form constantly. This is due to people blazing their own trail, cutting switchbacks to save time, bypassing water holes and mudbogs, and competition among friends to see who can climb the steepest hill. The result of these activities is witnessed by the soil, vegetation, wildlife, and water,
View looking southeast near Millville Canyon.
Soil is, arguably, the most affected feature on the landscape due to road and trail formation. Manning (1979) describes the recreational impact on soils as a seven-step cycle, beginning with trampling or vehicular use, and consisiting of these steps, scuffing away of leaf litter, loss of organic material, reduction in soil macroporosity, reduction in air and water permeability, reduction in water infiltration rate, increase in water runoff, and finally an increase in soil erosion. Compaction leads to loss of macroporosity and reductions in water infiltration rates. This reduces aeration and water movement in the soil, altering the character of soil organism populations and adversely affecting plant vigor and growth. Increased surface runoff often results in accelerated erosion, causing both profile truncation and gully erosion. Erosion is the most serious of these impacts because it is essentially irreversible. Recovery rates vary greatly , particularly with factors like biotic activity, length of growing season, and the nature of temperature and moisture fluctuations. Erosional losses are likely to take centuries to recover. Most other impacts should usually recover in a decade and can be speeded up thru human intervention. Succeptibility to impact varies between soils and with site factors. For example, erosion is more likely on steep slopes, shallow soils, places with sparse vegetation, and places where runoff is concentrated (Wildland Recreation, pp. 52-53).
Prime example of heavily eroded area.
If soil is the most affected feature on the landscape, then impacts on vegetation are the most obvious to users. Trampling and vehicular use affects vegetation both directly and indirectly. Breaking and bruising reduce plant vigor and reproductive capacity, while severe impacts kill plants directly. As a result of the soil changes described in the previous paragraph, reproductive capacity and plant vigor are also reduced. Damage to mature trees occurs usually at the root level, as a result of breaking and root exposure. One of the most serious problems is the lack of tree regeneration, due to saplings being unable to get established. As with soil, vegetation succeptibility to damage varies with respect to different environments.
Perhaps a not so obvious an impact, is the impact of backcountry travel on wildlife. These impacts can be either direct or indirect. Direct impacts are various levels of disturbance, and harassment, and actual killing of animals (being hit by a vehicle). Direct impacts may alter animal behavior, displace animals from their present habitat, and cummulatively these impacts can lead to a reduction in reproductive level of some species (Wildland Recreation, p. 80). Indirect impacts are basically habitat modification and loss of habitat. In general, the net result of backcountry travel on wildlife is an overall decrease in species diversity.
The final impact we must consider is the impact to water. The most obvious being the increased suspended matter, and turbidity as a result of erosion. Aside from being unpleasant to look at it is also detrimental to fisheries and other aquatic life. As of late water quality issues are becoming more and more important.
The factor that affects all of these environmental characteristics is environmental durability. Environmental durability is a site's ability to tolerate recreational use without changing or being disturbed (Wildland Recreation, p143). Factors included in environmental durability are site conditions, season of use, and also use characteristics. Durability should not be confused with resilience, resilience is the ability for an area to recover after changes occur. Therefore a particularly durable site may not be very resilient. For example, the desert is an environmentally durable biome, but it is not resilient, impacts here take hundreds of years to repair themselves. A riparian area exhibits the opposite end of the spectrum, it is impacted quickly, but also heals quickly. Tread Lightly! lists the most sensitive areas as tundra, deserts, and wetland areas.
The idea for this project came about through both our travels through the backcountry on mountain bike, four wheel drive roads, and hiking. We noticed that many roads and trails had become braided, and that they were wider than they needed to be in a lot of cases. We decided that we would try to map some of these new roads using GPS, and to see if we could use the GPS to determine if already existing roads had migrated far enough to make a difference on our roads coverage.
We defined our study area as the Smithfield, and Logan USGS 7.5 minute quads, and concentrated our efforts along the benches. The reason we selected this area to study was twofold. First of all many of the higher elevation roads and trails remained closed throughout the spring due to snow (especially this spring). Secondly the bench areas are close by and allow for many field visits, and they also contain many areas that have been highly impacted by off-road travel, due to their close proximity to urban areas.
The Tread Lightly vehicle came with an Eagle GPS unit installed. The funny white bump on top of the truck is a permanently installed GPS antennae. This unit has a fairly large display which allows the passenger to see a map of a stored route or the route you are creating.
Although, we weren't allowed to use the Tread Lightly 1994 Chevy Blazer for our mapping missions, we were allowed to drive it and give a tour of the impacted regions. We opted to use a very capable 71 Ford Bronco and a Trimble Basic+ GPS unit.
For our first mission we collected points from Blacksmith Fork Canyon to Dry Canyon. Waypoints and photographs of the impacted areas were taken for groundtruthing, and documentation so that in the future the sites could be revisited and rephotographed to assess change. This is inexpensive and quick for small regions.
The first route is located in the Logan 7.5 minute USGS quadrangle, and runs north south parallel to a Division of Wildlife fence, used to manage deer & elk herds, from Dry Canyon to Blacksmith Fork Canyon. The road runs on the east side of the fence. This trail has access points from the towns of Logan, Providence, and Millville, at Dry Canyon, Providence Canyon, and Millville Canyon respectively. The trail turns into a singletrack trail at the end of the fence at the Blacksmith Fork river. This effectively limits the 4wd traffic direction from the south.
If you can follow the order of the map and photo key you can understand that things get tricky. It would be nice if waypoint 1, photo exposure 1, sight 1 are collected in order, and increase in a nice orderly fashion. This is not always practical, as photos don't turn out or waypoints aren't accessed in exact order. Direction of collection can change as well. It is best if this is not the case however.
It is important to remember that you must collect GPS points as you collect waypoints, especially if you intend to include these as attributed points in a GIS. Initially we did not do this but soon realized our error and improved our technique. The entire route was then imported into the Trimble Pathfinder Software for editing and subsequent export into Arc/Info. The initial files were made up of individual arcs separated by waypoints. These were forced into a single arc and a separate file containing the GPS waypoints was created. These became point features. These coverages were then added as themes in Arcview 2.0
p# corresponds to exposure number for the waypoint. Arrows indicate camera direction.
This portion along the deer fence has slowly migrated east as the road has become more rutted.
As puddle and mud bogs form, so too do new roads.
Years ago this portion of the road paralelled the fence.
All it takes is one careless person to start a new trail, soon many will follow.
This is how the road was laid in its original state. However, you can see that people have tried to skirt around this puddle. Traveling slowly over the hard bottom causes less scarring than the berm that will soon develop to the side. Try the shovel test first to see how deep & gooey before proceeding
Mountain bike shortcut, if activity continues in this area rills, and gullies will form resulting in erosion, which will not heal in our lifetimes.
In this photo someone slid from behind the camera, when it was wet, into this area, in the following photo we see how this individual backed up into the vegetated area only to cause more damage.
Poor driving.
In this photo we see the multiple use that this road recieves, although mountain bikes do not cause as much damage as OHV's they are equally guilty of starting new trails, and being careless.
As more people attempt this hill gullies will form and soon the trail will begin to migrate, most likely in both directions.
Freeferall.
Example of the scarring that occurs as a result of hillclimbing.
The previously described techniques were used with the second route located in the Smithfield 7.5 minute USGS Quadrangle. This route extends along the foothills at the boundary of North Logan and HydePark to Long Hill and then west. Digital Elevation Models of the quadrangles were imported and converted to slope, aspect, and hillshade models. Tin Models were created and then used to create contours using the TIN Contour command. These were also included as additional themes in Arcview 2.0 with each dataset represented by a different view. The GPS points and routes were converted to shapefiles and copied to each of the views. Other themes included road, ownership, and soils data.
By this time we were able to reorganize the way we viewed our way points and directions. Notice how the hydegps.shp theme to the left of the image has changed
Each of the themes can be edited and copied as a legend file which can in turn be used to update the same theme located in a different view.
The speed at which areas can be revisited by navigating back to a waypoint with the GPS was proven with the following photos. These were redone and brought to a one hour photo shop the night before this report was due, scanned and imported. Black and white photos take a long time at USU Photo Services.
Remember to obey all signs and respect the rights of private property owners
GPS is an excellent tool for quickly assessing areas where change is occuring. Areas can be photographed and revisited with ease. This can be used to pinpoint damage, so that reparation efforts can be planned. Land managers could certainly use this tool to update inventories for whatever phenomena is being studied.
We hope that others can benefit from our experience and take a more serious look at the treasured trail systems that we all enjoy.
Tread Lightly! attempts to educate future users. We heartily support this stance
We would like to encourage others to attempt the same type of project in other regions. GPS is increasingly available to the general public and concerned trail users across the country and the world can help protect this resource from trail closures with this tool
These are some tips for minimizing impact on roads and trails:
1.Stay on designated trail
2.Try to avoid hiking while trails are wet, or muddy
3.Never shortcut switchbacks
4.When trail is muddy wear gaitors, to allow you to stay on trail
1.Stay off trails when they are muddy.
2.If you encounter a muddy stretch while riding, walk your bike over it.
3.Never shortcut switchbacks
4.Try not to skid
5.Stay on designated trails, don't trailblaze
1.Travel only where permitted
2.Try not to travel when roads are wet and muddy
3.Try to maintain traction at all times
4.Avoid streams, meadows, wildlife areas, etc.
5.Drive and travel responsibly
FOR MORE INFORMATION (and GREAT maps!)
Tread Lightly! Inc.
298 24TH STREET SUITE 325OGDEN, UTAH 84401
1-800-966-9900
Or contact your local BLM or USFS Land Manager for trail access information.
Remember to Tread Lightly! on public and private land
*The Opinions expressed are the authors and are not necessarily those of Tread Lightly, Inc. and or its corporate sponsors, members, or management
Twight, Ben, Jubenville, Alan, "Outdoor Recreation Mnagement", 3rd edition, Venture Publishing, 1993.
Hampton, Bruce, Cole, David, "Soft Paths", Stackpole Books, 1988.
Tread Lightly!, "Science Manual", 1994.
Logan, Bob, Clinch, Bud, "Forestry Best Management Practices", Montana Department of State Lands, 1991.
Hammitt, William, Cole, David, "Wildland Recreation, Ecology and Management", Wiley & Sons, 1987.
Laronne, Jonathan, Mosley, M., "Erosion and Sediment Yield", Hutchison Ross Publishing Company,1982.
Bork, Ploey, Schick, "Erosion, Transport and Deposistion Processes", International Society of Soil Science, 1991.