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Watching the dirt layer at my dig site in Tucson go from 30cm to 90cm since March is driving me nuts
We lost almost two feet of stratigraphy in 5 months because some off roaders tore through the access road and the runoff carved a new channel right through our unit, so now I'm re-recording depths on everything and has anyone else dealt with site damage from ORV traffic like this?
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phoenix_moore43h ago
30cm to 90cm in five months is brutal. The spot I worked in Red Rock had the same problem, a side-by-side trail ran right along the edge of our unit and one monsoon season took out a whole wall. What really burns me is the runoff part. Once that channel cuts in, it keeps cutting every rain, so you are not just re-recording depths once, you are chasing a moving target all season. I would flag the new channel line on your site map now and shoot GPS points on both banks, because next spring those will have moved again and you will want the before and after. Get the ORV damage documented with your state historic preservation office too, some of them keep track of repeat routes and can push for a gate or barrier. Two feet of lost dirt is a lot of context gone, sorry you are stuck with the paperwork.
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blake8423h ago
Would the SHPO really do anything with photos of tire tracks though? In my experience they log it and file it and that is about it unless the site is already on the National Register and even then it takes forever. What actually got a gate put in for us was the county road crew, because the runoff was undercutting their own access road too and suddenly it was their problem. Getting @phoenix_moore4 in on the GPS idea though, yeah, that part I agree with, but I would shoot points at fixed markers you can find again, like rebar with caps, so the next crew can actually line up the before and after.
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