WV Trail Inventory Project

WV GIS Technical Center at WVU Release
26 June 2014

The WV GIS Technical Center at West Virginia University and Rahall Transportation Institute at Marshall University are being funded by the WV Division of Highways to inventory, collect, attribute, and integrate all publicly accessible recreational trails in West Virginia.  This effort to create a comprehensive statewide trails database is being coordinated by the Division of Highway's State Trails Program (Bill Robinson & Ryan Burns) and GIS Section Head (Hussein Elkhansa).

If you are a trail stakeholder we would like for you to review our collection efforts and let us know if we have missed any publicly accessible trails, or if any of the trails have incorrect trail attributes or contact information.  We are also interested in collecting major parking access locations and land boundaries of trails systems that are not in the State Trails Database.

To assist you with your validation efforts, we are providing you with a link to an online interactive Trail Inventory Map (http://www.mapwv.gov/trails) that operates on desktop/tablet computers and smart phones.  Please use this online map to validate the trails mapped in your jurisdiction.

Please verify the following:
1)   All trails along with major access points are collected properly.
2)   Trail manager and contact information are correct.
3)   Correct trail attributes to include trail name, trail surface, managing organization, and allowed trail uses.
If you have recently validated trails of your jurisdiction then please disregard this email.  If you know of others who should review the completeness of publicly accessible trails in your jurisdiction, then please forward this information to them. 
At the end of this message are more links to information about this project.  Please contact me if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

Kurt Donaldson, GISP
Manager
WV GIS Technical Center
West Virginia University
330 Brooks Hall, 98 Beechurst Ave
Morgantown, WV 26506-6300
phone: (304) 293-9467
http://www.mapwv.gov/trails


Trail Project Links:

1)      Informational Flyer: http://mapwv.gov/trails/includes/WVtrailInventory_flyer.pdf
2)      Recent News Articles promoted by the WV Division of Tourism:
a)      WV Living magazine “The Trail Map We’ve All Been Waiting For:  A new online inventory maps West Virginia's trails” published June 11, 2014
http://www.wvliving.com/Web-2014/The-Trail-Map-Weve-All-Been-Waiting-For/
b)      Charleston Daily Mail news article "Digital map offers recreational trail options for WV residents" published June 1, 2014
http://www.charlestondailymail.com/article/20140601/DM01/140609977
3)      GIS Mapping File and Schema:  http://www.wvgis.wvu.edu/data/dataset.php?ID=413
4)      Trail County PDF Maps: http://wvgis.wvu.edu/resources/resources.php?page=mapProductsServices/trails
5)      Data Collection Phase Map: http://mapwv.gov/trails/reports/WVTrailsInventoryPhases_102013.pdf