Foot Traffic Over Tree Roots

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Foot Traffic Over Tree Roots

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Jam Lady

Joined: 28 Dec 2006
Posts: 2573
Location: New Jersey, USA

Posted: Mon Jun 18, 18 5:14 pm Post subject: Foot Traffic Over Tree Roots

Mistress Rose, this NY Times article is directly relevant to our discussion about stepping on ground occupied by tree roots in another thread, but I thought the subject is worthy of a topic of its own.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/18/us/yosemite-sequoia-mariposa-grove.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

A positive, multi-year, quite expensive effort to care for these ancient trees, complete with images of marvelously enormous Brobdingnagian trees.

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46249
Location: yes

Posted: Mon Jun 18, 18 9:04 pm Post subject:

the parking, shuttle bus and paths changes makes sense.

re foot fall on roots, it can be quite severe if the ground is eroded from shallow roots or the bark knocked off over surface roots/buttresses.

compression of soil is another issue.

having lived among trees and revisited them over nearly a decade while others still lived among them humans and trees can share quite nicely, we did minimum damage by using regular paths and they mostly fell over for no reason in places nobody ever went.

a neat trick to protect exposed roots on paths is to pop a couple of bigger logs each side and folk step over or the path changes direction.

even with the most delicate i dought stepping around it now and again to work on it would be a big or even small problem , with high levels of foot traffic it can be a serious issue.

Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 16002

Posted: Tue Jun 19, 18 7:06 am Post subject:

An interesting article Jam Lady, thanks for posting. It seems a very good idea to move the car parking away from the grove, and it looks as if they might have raised walkways in some areas too. Must be a fantastic place, but not sure I could cope with all those crowds either.

Agree Dpack that occasional walking won't do any harm. Continual can do though, so trying to move paths away from vulnerable trees is a good idea if possible.

Slim

Joined: 05 Mar 2006
Posts: 6614
Location: New England (In the US of A)

Posted: Tue Jun 19, 18 9:42 am Post subject:
Foot traffic is still preferable to the treatment the "chandelier tree" used to get. (I think) that's the tree they used to drive through! I wonder how much of a difference it makes how deep your annual frost line goes down. Frost/thaw cycles in the sing can really loosen soil back up. That's the whole concept behind frost seeding

Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 16002

Posted: Wed Jun 20, 18 6:26 am Post subject:
In the south of England we don't get very deep frosts most years, so only the top inch or two at most get frozen, and they thaw some days, so don't think that would work here.

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