Rural Road Ram

2NDNATURE has developed a field assessment and web-based information management system to track the progress and performance of rural road improvement programs. These road improvement programs, which are led by land owners or resource conservation districts, aim to reduce the amount of sediment generated from rural roads in California and assume that rural roads in poor condition are a significant and chronic source of sediment to local streams. Rural Road RAM is a standardized and easy-to-use tool to evaluate the relative rural road condition, determine the urgency of roadway improvements to reduce the road-derived sediment loads, and track the effectiveness of improvements over time. The primary product of Rural Road RAM is a customized web based data management system where users inventory road sites, enter standardized and consistent field observations, and simply review mapped and tabular results. 2NDNATURE translated existing road assessment protocols into a series of objective and rapid field proxies that express the relative risk of sediment delivery to local streams using a 0-5 scoring system. The data management system automates site condition tracking and program effectiveness reporting at any spatial scale (road network, watershed, county, etc.). Rural Road RAM is a valuable tool to simply and consistently evaluate, track and report the effectiveness of water quality improvement actions and the road improvement program in a format easily understood by regulators, funders, and the public. Rural Road RAM was initially developed in 2014 in collaboration with the Santa Cruz RCD to support their Rural Road Erosion Control Assistance Program (RRECAP; http://www.rcdsantacruz.org/rural-road-erosion-control-assistance-program-rrecap). Rural Road RAM is being improved and optimized by 2NDNATURE with Napa County partners as the tool to prioritize and track the benefits of the Napa County Rural Road Improvement Program, which will contribute to the sediment load reduction goals of the Napa Watershed Sediment TMDL.