ATC Expands Environmental-Monitoring Efforts

Trail Managers Expand Partnership to Monitor
Environmental Changes Along the Appalachian Trail

HARPERS FERRY, W.Va. -- The Appalachian Trail Conservancy (ATC) and its major federal partners have decided to enlarge several ongoing land-management programs into a long-term collaborative project to comprehensively monitor changes in the mountain and valley environments through which the famed, 2,174-mile footpath meanders.

The purpose of the project, expected to launch in mid-2007 as a partnership with other nonprofit organizations and scientific agencies, is fourfold:

• To understand the changes in air and water quality and the health of the plants and animals within the 250,000 acres of public lands associated with the trail.

• To more effectively protect that land’s natural resources.

• To foster public appreciation for nature generally and conservation of the Appalachian Trail specifically.

• To better tell the story of the status of the health of the Appalachian Trail’s lands to visitors, trail neighbors in 14 heavily populated eastern states, and the general public.

"This project has the potential to support every facet of our mission as it has evolved over the course of 81 years," says David N. Startzell, executive director of the Trail conservancy. "That includes our traditional work as

“And, it is a potent means to pull together many things we and our affiliated clubs have only recently initiated in reaching out to school children and neighboring communities.”

“Protection of the trail and the hiking experience for which it exists has always been our principal mission.  A quarter-century of citizen-based land-management experience has taught us, however, that ‘protection’ today means more holistic monitoring of everything going on in those woods and everything having an impact, from the boundaries in,” he added.

“Four generations of hikers have gone to the Appalachian Trail for a particular experience.  That’s why ATC has sought -- and achieved -- a buffer of public lands since 1935.  That experience is largely defined by the place in which it happens, and the fact of the matter is that the footpath we love and its shelter sites take up one-quarter of one percent of the land we are committed to protect and maintain for all generations to come.

“Recent satellite images shared by NASA and taken over a period of three decades show us that some things are definitely happening to that land, especially the forests.  The surrounding ‘urbanization’ and breaking (and remaking) of habitat is obvious, but we need to know more about the impacts and causes of those and other changes on wildlife and air and water quality if we are going to properly protect the resources behind that hiking experience.  And, we need this kind of expanded partnership to do it, because neither we and the clubs nor our traditional agency partners can do it alone,” he concluded.

The framework of the project was developed during a three-day symposium in early November at a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service training facility near Shepherdstown, W.Va.  The concept behind it is adapted from a 1997 “megatransect” of central Africa undertaken by National Geographic Society explorer-in-residence Michael Fay—a walk of more than 2,000 miles to document the health of plants and animals in blocks of pristine forest and fostered a chain of 13 national parks.

Fay told the symposium that transecting is what nineteenth-century explorers did: systematic collection of data on landscapes and species.  Climate change underway today “is perhaps the greatest challenge in our history,” Fay said, and the north-south path of the A.T., “an icon in this country,” is an excellent setting for collecting relevant, scientifically valid data on “where we’re going as a country.”

Such a project should look at perhaps 50 variables—“and everything goes in your notebook”—so that, over time, the relationships among variables, including the cultures of those who live nearby, can be seen, Fay told an evening audience of about 150.  Observations by walkers could be more valuable than some researchers’ myopia, he suggested.

“The Appalachian Mountains have been exploited for its resources for centuries—we’ve destroyed that ecosystem several times.  In the 21st century, it’s a great focal point for educating people to ecosystems’ resiliency,” he added.

Startzell agrees.  “Because we’re in everyone’s way,” the major threats to the trail as a place for relatively primitive backcountry recreation—highway expansion, huge power lines, encroaching developments—“are not going to go away,” he told the 65 participants at the opening session.  “But, if citizen-scientists and neighboring communities join with our existing 5,500 volunteers and become engaged in this project, the trail can serve as a classroom for learning and can motivate students to take action in defense of our environment.”

During the 1990s, the trail conservancy, working with state agencies, took inventories of rare, threatened, and endangered plants and a few animal species in all 14 states, finding 515 sites with 2,050 species of concern—believed to be the largest number of occurrences of any unit of the national park system.  Some species are globally rare or even unique to A.T. lands.

ATC then worked with the affiliated local clubs of volunteers to monitor those sites, but 75 percent today lack monitors.  More recently, it has developed localized programs with other groups to monitor air and water quality at specific areas and map movements of birds and large mammals.  Most of the seven other units of the park system and the eight national forests through which the trail passes also have monitoring programs, and many other scientists have been working independently on studies related to the trail.

Attempting to bring various organizations doing similar work together to advance protection of the A.T. only made sense.  “The Appalachian Trail’s 2,174 miles are the spine of the world’s longest publicly owned greenway, a protected home for thousands of special species and for the legacies of the eastern mountains.  Downwind and downstream is perhaps one-third of the U.S. population.  What happens to the Trail environment soon will happen to that environment,” notes Startzell, who is also chair of the American Hiking Society.  “We have a long history of engaging citizens for public benefit, and this seems an ideal way to provide many more opportunities to a broader spectrum of the public.”

Pamela Underhill, manager of the National Park Service Appalachian Trail Park Office (ATPO), thought the information generated could lead to better land-use decisions along the trail’s corridor, provide an “early warning system” for resources at risk, and help educate the public “about what’s happening to our environment.”

For the next six to eight months, the scientists participating in the symposium will be refining guidelines for the collection of the data for effective sharing within the new partnership and use with many different “data sets” currently in use by various monitors.  Others will be developing ways to recruit, train, and organize a corps of “citizen scientists” in a phased implementation plan to undertake that collection and to organize university and other researchers to analyze and make public the results over time.  Still others will be seeking funding from private and public sources to underwrite the coordinating work.

Brian Mitchell, inventory and monitoring coordinator for the Park Service’s Northeast Temperate Network in Woodstock, Vt., said the project is needed to better assess for the public the effect of environmental stress on the mountain environment.  But, he cautioned, it would only be considered a success if the work is relevant to public concerns, scientifically credible, and explicitly linked to decision-making.  Citizen engagement is essential, several other speakers asserted.

Determining the status of the trail environment and then determining trends over time is important, but throughout “we must collaborate, coordinate, and communicate,” added Steven Fancy, the agency’s national monitoring program leader.

Michael Soukup, National Park Service associate director for natural resource stewardship and science, noted, “The A.T. started the partnership concept” in the tending of public lands.  The work the group agreed to blends science, health, education, recreation, and, “most important, no child left indoors.”

“We are on the front edge of some exciting opportunities,” said David Meriwether, ecosystem management coordinator for the USDA Forest Service, who recalled working on A.T. projects in the Cherokee National Forest in Tennessee in the 1980s and “always having a sense of being a part of something really big.”

In addition to the trail conservancy and its major public partner, ATPO, symposium participants included representatives of U.S. Geological Survey agencies, the Pennsylvania Bureau of Conservation and Recreation, National Geographic Maps, National Park Service environmental-monitoring networks and natural-resources managers, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Maine A.T. Club, the North Georgia College and State University Environmental Leadership Center, NatureServe, USDA Forest Service environmental managers and researchers, Piedmont Appalachian Trail Hikers, the Vermont Institute of Natural Science/Mountain BirdWatch, the Appalachian Mountain Club research department, the Smithsonian Institution, the American Hiking Society, the National Parks Conservation Association, the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, the Virginia Division of Natural Heritage, and the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry.

The ATC-sponsored symposium and months of planning by Director of Conservation Mari Omland and her staff were funded by grants from the National Park Service, the U.S. Geological Survey, Aveda, and the Bob and Dee Leggett Foundation.  Facilitation was provided by Foundations of Success.

Please direct any questions or comments about the Mega-Transect project to:
ATMega-Transect@appalachiantrail.org

Detailed summaries of what’s known about the current trail environment can be found in the Vital Signs report published by the National Park Service.

The Appalachian Trail Conservancy, founded in 1925 by volunteers and federal officials who were working to put in place a continuous ridgetop footpath on the Appalachian Mountains, is a private nonprofit organization focused solely on the protection, management, and promotion of the Appalachian National Scenic Trail, supporting 5,500 volunteers in 30 affiliated local organizations who typically spend 185,000 hours a year on trail-related work. It has formal partnerships with the National Park Service, USDA Forest Service, and the 14 states crossed by the trail. Further information can be found at www.appalachiantrail.org.

Contacts:
Brian B. King, ATC, (304) 535-6331, ext. 111, bking@appalachiantrail.org
Don Owen, NPS-ATPO, (304) 535-4003, donald_owen@nps.gov