Testing the Appalachian Trail

The Appalachian Trail could be environmental 'canary in coal mine' for eastern U. S. The Trail gives hikers around nearly 2,200 mile trek through the mountains, and the meadows and also the forest that stretch from Georgia to Maine. Only to scientists and land managers, it is also a living laboratory that could provide warnings of looming environmental problems while there is still time to fix them. A diverse group of organizations has launched a project to begin a long term monitoring of the Appalachian Trail's environmental health, with plans to tap into an army of volunteer "citizen scientists" and their professional counterparts.

They will then together collect information about the health of the plant's, and the air and water quality and also the animal migration patterns to build an early warning system for around 120 million people along the Eastern Seaboard. "It is somewhat like the canary in the coal mine in the sense of using it as a barometer for environmental and human conditions."

The Appalachian Mountains are just ideal for this project because they are home to one of the richest collections o temperate zone species in the world. They are also having a variety of ecosystems that blend into one another, and hardwood forests next to softwood forests next to alpine forest. The Appalachian Trail along the mountain chain passes through around 14 states and eight national forests.

The main idea for the project, the Appalachian Trail Mega-Transect, is still in its infancy, and it already has a support from the National Park Service and the U. S. Forest Service, Cornell University, and the National Geographic Society and the environmentally conscious beauty products company Aveda Corp., and with the park service's Northeast Temperate Network in Woodstock, Vermont. It will get a better understanding of what is happening on the trail so they can better manage it.