MEGA-Transect Becomes Potential Centennial Challenge Project

August 30, 2007-Full implementation of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy’s new Trail-wide environmental monitoring initiative, known as the A.T. MEGA-Transect program, has taken a significant step forward with its certification on August 23 as a potential Centennial Challenge project for the National Park Service (NPS), which is looking forward to its 100th anniversary in 2016.

The agency included the $486,000 project—announced in November 2006 at a symposium of more than 60 scientists and federal and state officials sponsored by the Appalachian Trail Conservancy (ATC) and a half-dozen major partners—on a list of 201 eligible for funding in 2008 or later years if the Congress approves the NPS budget proposal for the grants.  A key requirement of the budget proposal is at least 50-percent matching funding from a private-sector partner, in this case ATC working with the NPS Appalachian Trail Park Office.

If Congress approves the Centennial Challenge for the new fiscal year beginning October 1, the NPS would then decide which among the $370 million worth of projects are funded in the first year.

Through Trail-wide environmental monitoring conducted mostly by volunteer citizen-scientists of indicators like water quality and forest health, the A.T. MEGA-Transect Program will use the Appalachian Trail’s immediate environment as an “early-warning” system of the environmental health of the eastern United States and its communities downwind and downstream from the footpath and its buffer of public lands.