Footpath degradation of the Malvern Hills - Malvern Hills Conservators

Stephen Britnell
Footpath degradation of the Malvern Hills
The Malvern Hills are not solely traversed by walkers and hikers, but are also used by
horse riders and mountain bikers. From studying Figure 9 and the degree of erosion of the
footpaths, it can be deduced that the footpaths heavily used by mountain bikes are the most
eroded. From this correlation it can be deduced that mountain bikes are more erosive than
walkers. My research does not allow this to be quantified, but tests such as those carried out
by Deluca et al. (1998) on sample plots could allow this to be achieved. Satisfactory results
for the erosive power of horses could not be inferred due to the lack of observed horse use on
the studied footpaths.
5.2 Environmental variables
This section will deal with the effects of soil structure, slope angle, and path angle on
path degradation, while considering the fore mentioned theories and the relative importance
of each variable to path morphology.
5.2.1 Soil structure
There are two conflicting schools of thought when considering soil composition in
relation to path degradation. Firstly, Leung et al. (1996) and Morgan (1995) state that paths
that are found upon soils with a majority of the composition as large particles, such as gravel
are more durable than soils with a particularly high content of fine sands and silt. Conversely,
Garland et al. (1985) believes that the larger the stones present the greater eroded the path
is, and so the more susceptible the path is to erosion. My own study shows mixed results.
The soil samples taken from path 1 contain a high percentage of gravel (see Table 1)
and are also quite highly eroded; also path 8 has a low percentage of gravel and displays low
levels of erosion. This agrees with Garland et al. (1985) assumption. However, path 5 has
high amounts of gravel in the soil and is lowly eroded, so displays features of the assumption
made by Leung et al. (1996) and Morgan (1985). On the other hand path 7 displays features
of both contrasting assumptions. However, a more detailed study of path 1 shows that the
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