this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2025
56 points (96.7% liked)

No Stupid Questions

40325 readers
631 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)

Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.

Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.

Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.

Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.

Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.

Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.

Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.

Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.

Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.

Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.

Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
technopagan@lemmy.world
jeffw@lemmy.world
L3s@hackingne.ws
56
How do man-made hiking trails keep the grass from overgrowing the dirt portion of the trail? (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by thermal_shock@lemmy.world to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
22 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Surely there aren't enough people walking them constantly to mash the grass to death, is there some kind of membrane placed under the dirt to stop grass growth?

Here is a pic of worn path from walking on, rough edges, clearly not intentional.

Will post pic after walking the dog of the trail that I'm speccifically curious about.

top 22 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] DoubleDongle@lemmy.world 68 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yes, there are enough people walking on it to just kill the grass. No further effort is needed to form the pathway. Many wild animals make paths by walking on them a lot too.

[–] Crazyslinkz@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

Also once yearly trail maintenance or some other cadence. At least if a state or national park.

[–] cymbal_king@lemmy.world 36 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Plants are actually pretty sensitive to soil compaction, which can take a lot of time to reverse. the composition clay/sand in the soil can changed the time it takes to resettle, and it might even just erode down to rock.

[–] thermal_shock@lemmy.world 11 points 2 days ago

This one makes the most sense. There's trails behind my house that I walk pretty much daily and maybe meet three people the entire time. There's just not enough people walking on that path to cause that so it must be the compaction.

[–] litchralee@sh.itjust.works 21 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Obligatory reference to desire paths: !desire_paths@sh.itjust.works

Traffic -- under foot or otherwise -- is one way to keep a path in decent shape

[–] foggy@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

laughs in New England accent

Absolutely not.

"Rock before root and root before dirt - and never touch the mud if you can help it."

Literally hiking 101 out here. What we teach the children for trail preservation.

Is also why ~5 miles in ADK, the greens, or the whites, is like ~10 miles anywhere else. But yeah... No. Traffic definitely does not keep a trail in shape.

[–] vzq@lemmy.world 19 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Can you please elaborate? What is that children’s rhyme meant to teach? What are green and white ADKs?

Google was not very helpful.

[–] just_ducky_in_NH@lemmy.world 9 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

ADK is short for ADirondacK mountain range. The others are the Green Mountain range and White Mountain range. All start in New England. The saying describes how step on the trail without causing it to erode into a gully.

[–] foggy@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

ADK = Adirondacks.

Green (Mountains), White (Mountains).

It teaches kids to preserve trails by not walking on them, if at all possible. While walking on trails in New York and New England, you should aim for a rock first. If there is no rock to step on, aim for a root. If there is no root, then dirt is ok to step on. But avoid mud at all costs.

This highlights the ruggedness of the terrain out there. Where many hikes elsewhere provide such an ample amount of dirt with so little rock and root to aim for first, it is not a well known trail maintenance practice outside of the region. However, in the region, it is essential. When ignored, large patches of mud that will last all season long start to form. When this happens, trail maintainers either:

  1. Close the trail until it's restored

  2. Reroute the trail permanently

  3. Lay down wooden planks to minimize further damage (least sustainable option).

This maintenance is tax dollars, and they don't have a lot of them, so education is the most effective use of that dollar. And that's why we teach the kids:

Rock before root and root before dirt, and never step in mud if you can avoid it! 🤠

[–] litchralee@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I should clarify that my original comment -- foot traffic keeps paths in decent shape -- was in answer to the OP's titular question, about why vegetation doesn't grow atop the intended walking/hiking trail. But you're right that traffic will cause other impacts, even if plantlife isn't getting in the way.

I'm in 100% agreement that for trail upkeep, people have to be mindful how they step. The advisories here in California focus on not eroding the edges of the trail, such as by walking around muddy areas, which would only make the restoration work harder and damage more of the adjacent environment. We have a lot of "stay on trail" signs. We advise people to either be prepared to go right through the mud -- only worsens an existing hole -- or don't walk that trail at all.

[–] foggy@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I buy it. Yeah different techniques for different terrain, I suppose.

Take for example, this. Here, we'd say to step on that rock, and then leap to that root on the left, then the root on the right, then the fallen tree, etc.

If you don't, you end up with this. And something that bad will end up closed, or rerouted. Hopefully, it'll get something like this or this before it's bad, and might stand a chance at not needing much more restoration, but again this isn't nearly as sustainable.

My assumption is, as I was saying about the ruggedness of the terrain out this way, the wider, less ankle-breaking, smooth switchbacks (as opposed to New England and ADK's tendency to just go more or less straight up huge chutes) of the west coast demand the literal opposite methods to care for the trails.

[–] starlinguk@lemmy.world 19 points 2 days ago

Where I live they're not maintained at all. If nobody uses them for a while they disappear. I have a "path" nearby that's on every single map but you can no longer see it used to be a path.

[–] rc__buggy@sh.itjust.works 28 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

No, it's just foot traffic everywhere I've hiked

edit- I guess maybe you're talking about those nature hikes with the box-landscape-stairs. Those are filled in with rock and clay so the grass doesn't have any nutrients, then maintained with the fine granite gravel, which I think even has a chemical effect on the soil, suppressing plants

[–] JovialSodium@lemmy.sdf.org 18 points 2 days ago

I built an office shed in my back yard. Almost all the grass is gone where I walk between the back door and the shed. I do this fairly frequently, but I'd think still quite a bit less than an even lightly trafficked hiking path.

I'll put some stepping stones out there eventually.

[–] tlekiteki@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 2 days ago (1 children)

dirt compression its what killed my potted plant

[–] thefartographer@lemm.ee 18 points 2 days ago (1 children)

You walked on your potted plant?

[–] RebekahWSD@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago

My first thought was "ah, squished by a cat"

[–] Opinionhaver@feddit.uk 10 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The fact that the trail exists there in the first place means that there's enough people walking on it that the grass dies and doesn't grow bag. I've started a trail from scratch and I doubt there's more than a handful of people walking there every week but the trail just keeps getting more carved in.

[–] thermal_shock@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

This one's man made though, it's around a nature preserve and it's runs between dozens of small communities in my area. This area is well known for outdoors, trails, creeks, small lakes, all in a very dense residential area.

[–] mutual_ayed@sh.itjust.works 10 points 2 days ago (1 children)

No membrane. Just clay and stone.

https://www.fs.usda.gov/t-d/pubs/htmlpubs/htm07232806/page09.htm

[–] Beacon@fedia.io 3 points 2 days ago

Cool

[–] 56_@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 days ago

The construction of a hiking path depends on the environment and budget. There certainly is membrane used in some, especially in wet/boggy environments. I think it's mostly gravel that's used to prevent grass from growing. (people don't walk on the entire width of the path usually)