Slip, Sliding Away
By Tim Decker January 2024
Many of us have witnessed firsthand the effects of seasonal flooding and rock slides, almost always occurring in or near places that have been highly developed. The slides cause road closures, rerouting of traffic, and travel delays. A great local example is Route 7 between Steubenville and Mingo Junction where reconstruction has been going on for years and with a very high price tag.
To understand why this is happening, we need to look at the history of this area, and not just from a few years ago, but from about 480 million years ago when the Appalachian range formed.
These mountains are some of the the oldest in the world. When they first formed, they rivaled the Alps and the Himalayas. Newly formed mountains tend to have sharp peaks, little soil, and scarce wildlife. However, over the millennia, our mountains have been slowly weathered and eroded. Weathering is the breaking down of the Earth’s surface by wind, water, ice, or even plants. Erosion is the carrying away of this material by wind, water, or ice. This weathering caused the original hard rocky surfaces to be covered with a finer dust, which allowed plants to grow.
As the number of plants increased, so did the soil as they died and decomposed. This process continued until the Appalachians, which stretch from Maine to Georgia, became home to some of the most biodiverse areas in the world. The entire range boasted one of the highest diversity numbers for temperate areas with 255 kinds of birds, 78 kinds of mammals, 58 kinds of reptiles, and 76 kinds of amphibians.
Enter humans.
The first people in North America were the Native Americans (personally, I prefer First Peoples). When Europeans first arrived on this continent, it was estimated that there might have been as many as 112 million native people living in what is now the United States. Their impact on the area was minimal. Their “roads” were narrow paths that connected them to hunting areas or other villages. If something large was in the way (trees, boulders, mountains, rivers) they would determine the easiest way to cross or just go around those barriers. The newly arrived Europeans also used these trails to travel (on foot, on horse, or in wagons).
But that all changed in the early 1900’s when Henry Ford opened his first automobile factory. Automobiles became readily available to the public, so those bumpy old pathways were no longer acceptable. Plus, with greater numbers of people driving, those narrow routes needed to be widened.
Suddenly, smooth expansive roadways were a necessity. New machinery was developed to cut into hillsides and mountains to make this possible. In the 1940’s the emphasis changed from personal travel to transporting materials to factories for the war effort. Thus, roads continued to become wider and longer.
Wheeling Island flooding, 2024. Photo courtesy of Davis Aerial Insights
This is where our current problems began. To achieve the aforementioned goals, large areas were stripped of vegetation. Hills and mountains were then carved into, cut, split, drilled, and blasted to make roads that were easier for cars and trucks to navigate. That hillside, which had been slowly forming over 480 million years, was now rapidly and dramatically altered. This process caused two problems. First, the grasses, plants, and trees that had previously covered the area absorbed huge amounts of water. Just one oak tree can absorb up to 100 gallons of water a day! After the hill had been cleared of thousands of trees millions of gallons ran unimpeded down the slopes, causing massive weathering and erosion. Second, the hillside was cut to form a flat space for the road. This cut exposed ancient rock that hadn’t seen the light of day in millions of years. The rain and flowing water could now enter cracks in the rock. When it froze, the ice expanded forcing the cracks wider apart. After a short period of time, this caused the rock walls to crumble and fall.
The Department of Transportation has maintenance supervisors to take inventory of slope problems. They look at rockfalls, slides, and highways showing signs of distress (cracking, bending, etc.). They then categorize them as very serious, serious, major, or minor. Though there are multiple ways of addressing each concern, the problem is this: we are trying to maintain a permanent structure on a constantly shifting surface. Our planet has been slowly changing from the moment it formed through the present day, and will continue to do so in the future.
What is the solution to this problem? We have become very good at building roads and overcoming obstacles that this planet puts in front of us. We have built roads up steep mountains, through hills, across deserts, in frozen tundra, through forests and rainforests, and over (and under) large bodies of water. Every time, our “success” has led to an adverse impact on the environment. In future, maybe we can put a little less thought into whether we can build a road in a particular area and more thought into whether we should at all.
(Originally posted in 13 Creeks Magazine, January 2024.)
Tim Decker has taught science courses from pre-K to college. He greatly enjoys exploring new environments, from nearby parks to the Costa Rican rainforest. He lives in Island Creek with his wife.
