Assessing and Characterizing Military Vehicle Impacts In Support of Training Land Management.

The Army actively manages over 7M acres of live-fire and maneuver training lands. The use of military vehicles during training events results in soil disturbance and vegetation loss leading to increased soil erosion rates and sedimentation in streams. Accurate assessment of these impacts is limited by the technical data currently available. An approach and tool set have been developed and demonstrated to collect timely, relevant, and consistent vehicle impact data to support military land management requirements. The approach addresses the spatial distribution and severity of vehicular impacts while characterizing how the vehicles and maneuver areas are actually used during training. The system uses GPS-based vehicle tracking systems to determine location and dynamic operating characteristics (i.e., turning radius and velocity) of the vehicles. Statistical and theoretical models are used to determine vegetation loss and impact width based on the static and dynamic vehicle properties and soil conditions. These assessments have been used to identify areas for land rehabilitation work and trail development and predict potential impacts of new or newly modified military vehicular systems. The assessments can also be used to characterize vehicular movement in threatened, endangered, and sensitive species habitat and determine land repair funding requirements to support future training.