National Trail Surfaces Study

Modifications to the Longitudinal Study

In 2006, NCA began the recruitment of various sites to participate in the original study objectives. Entities such as the National Park Service, US Forest Service, and city Parks and Recreation departments were the central focus of the recruitment process. By the end of 2006, NCA had initial commitments from a number of state or federal outdoor recreation entities to provide test sites for the trail surface study, however, the down turn in the economy and additional factors such as lack of ability to commit labor hours and installation resources, resulted in those commitments being withdrawn. From the perspective of the individual potential sites, the original study objectives and methods for achieving them relied heavily on their ability to contribute their own money and labor to the study procedures; both resources that we saw become quickly depleted and/or significantly diminish. Potential study participants expressed concern in the ability to fund the portions of the study previously agree to be financially responsible for, which included the aggregate material needed for both the base of the trail surface and the aggregate which was mixed with the stabilizer for the cases where necessary. Soon after the initial concerns were being expressed by potential participants, NCA began receiving notifications that due to economic hardships, potential test site staff were being let go, and therefore the labor required in the study parameters to install the surfaces, and to maintain and observe them, disappeared. Another difficulty the potential test site location had was the ability to maintain the trails surface study site through the proposed five-year period of time. Most entities felt the timeframe was too long, and while they understood the need for the longevity in terms of receiving the most accurate data on the surface, it was not within their capability to meet those parameters. NCA received letters that cited these difficulties in addition to others. Financial restraints were not the only obstacle NCA faced in the beginning phases of the study. It was also difficult navigating through the research process of the National Parks Service, which is where a lot of the study energy was initially invested in gaining participation for the study. While many parks agreed to the study, and even got so far as to identify installation locations, the process of applying for in-the-park research from an outside agency made it impossible in some parks for the study to move forward. It became apparent that conducting the installation, maintenance, monitoring, and data collection at locations throughout the country was not feasible at that current time. As a result, the longitudinal data collected and reported for Part I of this study over 51 months, is limited to the Bradford Woods site in Martinsville, Indiana. The scope of the study again changed course to continue to discover other methods of contributing to the research on firm and stable natural trail surface alternative. The results of the change in scope is discussed in Part II of this report.