Trail Assessment and Condition Surveys (TrACS)
For most of its history the US Forest Service has depended on the first-hand experience of trail managers and technicians to catalog and maintain its extensive network of recreation trails. In recent times the pressure of reduced budgets, increased workloads, shifting priorities, and the departure of experienced personnel has had a significant impact on the agency’s ability to inventory trails. As a result there has been a dearth of up-to-date knowledge regarding the condition and maintenance priorities of the USFS trail system.
Congress and the Forest Service began addressing these issues in 1991 with the order to establish a systematized method for inventorying property, its condition, and associated costs. This would become Infra Trails, the Forest Service’s database for all relevant trails data.
In 1999 the agency established national standards for conducting these property and condition assessments. These standards included guidelines for appropriate quantity and detail of data collected, as well as relevance to management objectives given the Forest Service’s mission to balance recreational, ecological, and economic use of forest resources. Furthermore, requirements were established for surveying a minimum percentage of the agency’s trail system.
Thus TrACS was born with implementation beginning across the entirety of the Forest Service by skilled practitioners, such as the SCA TrACS Team. With the data recorded through TrACS surveys the Forest Service will be able to more accurately assess its property holdings, their condition, deferred and routine maintenance costs, and how best to make use of limited material and human resources. It is the goal of the agency to establish a trail inventory of the entire Forest Service system and continue updating trails data on a routine basis.