Backcountry resource management specialists and trails maintenance supervisors met with students and staff from James Madison University, Virginia, to discuss the project details. Assessment criteria included in the discussions, a need to qualitatively measure trail degradation factors such as erosion and vegetative encroachment. Also, identified were needs to know where the concentration of down trees and debris are most evident and the number, condition and locations of bridges, retaining walls and cribbing. Water control is important, especially along trails. Often, a trail will act as a conduit for water during storm events of the type mentioned.
Channels result as erosion carries the structural integrity of the trail bed down slope.
Water control features such as checkdams, waterbars and culverts are important impediments to this process. Although it is important to know the locations of WCF s, many sections of trail, or reaches, contain hundreds of certain types of these features. It was determined early in the mapping and assessment processes that a tally would suffice for these. Others, such as culverts, retaining walls and cribbing were individually mapped with GPS, measured and overall condition assessed. Many of these control points were used in defining reachbreaks.