Landscape and Urban Planning 94 (2010) 228–233

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Landscape and Urban Planning

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/landurbplan

Cliff roads: An ecological conservation technique for road construction in

mountainous regions of China
Shixiong Cao a,b,∗ , Huihai Ye a , Yong Zhan c
a
Environmental Engineering Research Center, Research Institute of Highways, Beijing 100088, PR China
b
College of Soil and Water Conservation, Beijing Forestry University, No. 35, Qinhuadong Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100083, PR China
c
Highway Bureau of Hubei Province, Wuhan 430000, PR China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Cliff ecosystems are important for biodiversity protection because these sites often support surprisingly
Received 11 February 2009 ancient and diverse communities, including rare plants and lichens, trees, birds, and small mammals.
Received in revised form 31 July 2009 To protect Chinese cliff ecosystems, an ancient cliff road construction technique is now being used. To
Accepted 8 October 2009
understand the environmental benefits of this approach, we monitored eight cliff road sites in the warm
Available online 7 November 2009
Shennongjia region of China’s Hubei Province from June 2006 to July 2009 during road construction. Com-
pared with the traditional filling in of roadside slopes or bridge construction formerly used for highway
Keywords:
construction in this area, the cliff highway technique, which combines cantilevered slab roads along the
Cliff ecosystems
Environmental conservation
edge of the cliff with bridge support structures where additional support is required, reduces environ-
Cliff path mental damage and represents a good option for the conservation of fragile cliff ecosystems, while greatly
Cliff road reducing the construction cost. In such areas, the basic objectives of road construction must include bio-
diversity protection and careful control of the construction process and subsequent cleanup of the site,
which cannot be ignored as a result of concentrating on the goal of using the roads to promote regional
economic and tourism development.
© 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction the fragmentation of these ecosystems caused by roads can sig-

Cliff ecosystems are important for biodiversity protection
because these sites often support surprisingly ancient and diverse
communities, including rare plants and lichens, trees, birds,
and small mammals (Krajick, 1999; Sergio et al., 2003). Human
actions—which include rock climbing (Krajick, 1999), communica-
tion between regions via cliff roads (Sari et al., 2002; Jaarsma et al.,
2006), and other human actions (Cao et al., 2006)—are eliminating
species from these sites even as scientists discover them (Jodice et
al., 1999).
As a result of the uplift of the Tibetan Plateau ca. 80,000 ka BP, a
huge area of cliff landscapes formed in western China, especially in
and around Sichuan Province. This area includes some of the rich-
est biodiversity and the most difficult travel conditions in the world
(Shui and Chen, 2007; Liu, 2008). As a result of China’s recent rapid
economic development and growth, an extensive road network is
being constructed in many regions (Xu et al., 2006). Unfortunately,
the impacts of road construction can be most severe in mountain-
ous regions, where ecosystems are particularly fragile and where
∗ Corresponding author at: College of Soil and Water Conservation, Beijing
Forestry University, No. 35, Qinhuadong Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100083, PR
China. Tel.: +86 10 6233 6097; fax: +86 10 6233 8689.
E-mail address: shixiongcao@126.com (S. Cao).
nificantly alter the landscape structure within multiple vegetation
types at a variety of ecological scales (Pauwels and Gulinck, 2000;
Sari et al., 2002; Cao et al., 2006).
Chinese environmental problems are among the most severe
being faced by any major country, and show signs of worsening
(Liu et al., 2003). Many Chinese, including the nation’s leaders, are
aware of these problems and have tried to tackle them (Cao, 2008).
For example, to protect its biodiversity, China has established 1757
national and local nature reserves. The reserves cover about 13% of
the nation’s area, mostly in western China (Liu et al., 2003) and
especially in and around Sichuan and Yunnan provinces, where
a huge area of cliff landscapes has formed (Shui and Chen, 2007;
Liu, 2008). These areas are also significant tourist destinations, and
draw millions of visitors daily (Morell, 2008). Environmental pro-
tection is a significant challenge for national highway development
because more than two-thirds of the area affected by the devel-
opment of new roads lies in mountainous regions. Cliff landforms
are particularly common in Sichuan and Yongnan provinces, and in
large parts of southwestern China. Balancing environmental pro-
tection with the need for communication between areas is difficult
because of the huge population (approximately 200 million) who
live in western China and their need to improve communication
with the rest of the country. To implement its sustainable develop-
ment strategy (Jiang, 2000), China’s Ministry of Communications
has proposed an environmentally friendly approach to protect the

0169-2046/$ – see front matter © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.landurbplan.2009.10.007
 S. Cao et al. / Landscape and Urban Planning 94 (2010) 228–233
environment during the construction of new highways (Peng et
al., 2007). To prevent the severe environmental damage caused
by conventional road construction in these areas, researchers (e.g.,
Justo et al., 2008) have highlighted the urgent need to develop envi-
ronmentally acceptable solutions that can be used when roads are
constructed in cliff areas.
Road construction can create extensive surface disturbance,
with correspondingly serious impacts on the surrounding environ-
ment, especially where the soil is highly susceptible to erosion,
where the vegetation cover is poor, and where the ecosystem is
fragile (Xu et al., 2006). In addition, the construction can have
significant impacts far from the construction site; for example,
traditional road construction requires large volumes of fill mate-
rials, particularly in mountainous areas, and the granular materials
required for this purpose must often be obtained from borrow
pits located outside the mountains. To reduce ecosystem dam-
age in cliff areas, an ancient Chinese cliff path technique has
recently been resurrected. The same technique that is used for
canopies and balconies (Teng et al., 2001), namely cantilevering,
has been used to construct slab roads on the sides of cliffs. At some
sites, the slab road is combined with bridge support structures
where additional support is needed. To understand the environ-
mental benefits of this approach, we undertook a study to explore
the potential for protecting ecosystems during the construction
of roads through mountainous terrain by monitoring the con-
struction of eight cliff road sites in the warm Shennongjia region
of China’s Hubei Province—one of the country’s famous national
nature reserves and tourist areas—from June 2006 to July 2009.
We studied the use of two variations of the cliff path technique,
with the following research question: Could the new technique pre-
serve the functional characteristics of the landscape, protect the
cliff ecosystems around the roads, and decrease construction costs?
To answer this question, we compared these aspects of the cliff road
technique with those of the traditional filling in of roadside slopes
or bridge construction that were formerly used for highway con-
struction in this area. Because the construction sites were too steep
to permit intensive monitoring (our investigations were limited by
the engineering manager because of safety concerns), we were not
able to obtain much data on soil erosion; instead, we have used the
areas of the site that were disturbed and the impacts on the original
vegetation cover as proxies for the erosion risk. Our results showed
that the new techniques can improve the protection of cliff ecosys-
tems while dramatically decreasing construction costs. Two other
important goals of this paper are to introduce these traditional
techniques to Western readers and thereby help improve environ-
mental protection in mountainous terrain, and to draw attention
to the need for conservation of cliff ecosystems around the world.
2. Methods
2.1. Cliff paths in ancient China
A poem by Li Po, written 1200 years ago during the Tang
Dynasty, described the difficulty of communication between
regions in southwestern China: “Travelling into Sichuan is difficult,
even harder than climbing to the blue sky.” To improve commu-
nication between regions in mountainous areas with many cliffs,
engineers traditionally (as early as 300 bc) built cliff paths (Ronan,
2003) by cutting holes into the cliff face and driving wooden beams
into the holes. Planks were then laid on the beams to form a path,
2–3 m wide, for people to walk on. Canopies were built in some
places to protect travelers from falling rocks and other debris (Shui
and Chen, 2007; Liu, 2008). The bridge technique, in which addi-
tional support structures were installed below the path, was used
in other areas, particularly to cross gullies. More than 1000 km of
229
such roads were built in western China during the Qin dynasty,
which lasted from 221 to 206 bc (Shui and Chen, 2007). A section of
these cliff paths can still be discerned at the mouth of the Thatched
Cottage River, on the northern bank of the Yangtze River (Ronan,
2003). Although this approach was originally devised to reduce
construction costs, it also improved environmental conservation
as a result of decreased disturbance of the original landscape. To
promote environmental protection, this ancient technique is now
being resurrected for use in mountainous parts of China, with the
planks replaced by modern construction materials (Appendix A).
2.2. Experimental design
Our study was conducted in the Shennongjia tourist area
(110◦ 03 05 E to 110◦ 33 50 E, 31◦ 21 20 N to 31◦ 36 20 N) in west-
ern Hubei Province. The study area had a mean annual temperature
of 15.9 ◦ C (ranging from −16.8 ◦ C in January to 43.1 ◦ C in August),
and average annual precipitation of 1155 mm. At the end of 2005,
China’s Ministry of Communications and the Communications
Office of Hubei Province decided to rebuild a road in the tourist
area to demonstrate the potential of the new techniques for envi-
ronmental protection, while widening the road from 6 to 8 m, with
the additional goal of minimizing the visual impact of the roads.
The work sites included 53 km of class II paved road and ranged in
elevation from 178 to 1168.9 m. We studied the construction opera-
tions at eight cliff sites. In contrast with the conventional technique,
which involved bridge construction and filling in of the slope below
the road, the new technique used either a cantilevered slab road
(Fig. 1) or a cantilevered slab road combined with bridge supports
(Fig. 2). Four examples of each type of road were studied.
The cantilevered slab roads were constructed at sites with near-
vertical slopes, where the cliff face was composed of granite judged
sufficiently solid to withstand both heavy vehicle traffic and natu-
ral hazards such as earthquakes. At such sites, it would have been
prohibitively difficult to use conventional construction techniques,
which would have required destruction of the natural cliff face to
create road cuts through the natural rock (Appendix B), or the cre-
ation of long switchbacks to bring the road to a lower elevation
where cut and fill construction would have been possible (Appendix
C). This approach was supplemented with the use of bridge sup-
ports where the slope beneath the road was sufficiently shallow to
permit the installation and effective use of these structures.
2.3. Field observations
To quantify the environmental disturbance created by the cliff
road technique, we monitored the total volume of soil and stone
Fig. 1. Photograph of a typical cliffside highway based on the use of a cantilevered
slab road.
230 S. Cao et al. / Landscape and Urban Planning 94 (2010) 228–233

site that would have been affected by the construction operation.

We then calculated the proportion of each site accounted for by this
disturbed area as a measure of the proportion of the original vege-
tation that would have been damaged. All engineering and cost data
on the construction of the cliff roads were obtained from the road
construction managers, with the material volumes confirmed using
the methods described above. To determine the costs of construct-
ing roads at the same locations using conventional techniques, we
combined the engineering data with the costs of the cheapest con-
ventional techniques that are used in similar projects. This data was
supplied by the Highway Design Institute of Hubei Province. We
used Microsoft Excel 2003 for all calculations and statistical anal-
ysis. We tested the statistical significance of differences between
the new and conventional techniques using the F-test (p < 0.05)
provided by Excel.

Fig. 2. Photograph of a typical cliffside highway that combines a cantilevered road 3. Results
with bridge supports.

that was removed or relocated during construction. To determine
the construction costs, we obtained data on the number of worker-
hours of labor and the total quantity of construction materials
consumed at each site every day during the road construction. This
data was provided by the construction managers from June 2006 to
July 2009. To eliminate errors in this data, we surveyed each con-
struction site once the road construction was complete using the
blueprints (design specifications) for the road. We then used the
labor, equipment, and material costs provided by the construction
managers to calculate the total costs of each section of road that we
monitored.
To assess vegetation damage, we determined the canopy density
at each site by means of line-intersect sampling before the road con-
struction (in June 2006) and after the construction was complete
(in July 2009). In this approach, we measured the length of the
transect line that intersected vegetation in 20-m transects (2–10
per construction site) running down the slope and below the road.
We expressed damage to the vegetation as the proportion of the
original length of the transect covered by vegetation in June 2006
that was no longer covered by vegetation in July 2009; to estimate
the area of vegetation damaged by the road construction, we then
multiplied this proportion by the total area of the work site.
To estimate the vegetation damage that would have occurred if
roads had been built using conventional approaches, we used data
provided by the Highway Design Institute to predict the area at each
The results of our vegetation surveys (Table 1) reveal that the
new construction techniques can protect the vegetation along the
roads significantly better than conventional techniques. The area
of damaged vegetation averaged 0.15 m2 (ranging from 0.14 to
0.16 m2 ) per meter of road length in the technique that combined a
cantilevered slab road with bridge supports, and 0.26 m2 (ranging
from 0.05 to 0.41 m2 ) with the cantilevered slab road; these values
compare with 5.9 and 5.6 m2 , respectively, for conventional road
construction at the two types of sites. For all eight plots combined,
the area of damaged vegetation was 96.9% less (ranging from 71.7
to 98.6% less) than in the conventional technique. Despite the steep
slopes and high precipitation, we observed no significant signs of
erosion during the study period, suggesting that the new approach
may have additional environmental benefits compared with the
conventional technique, which often leads to large amounts of ero-
sion, particularly if slopes are not stabilized by revegetation or other
techniques soon after road construction. Unfortunately, because of
safety considerations, it was not possible to quantify erosion at the
eight study sites.
The new techniques also decreased disturbance of the physi-
cal environment around the roads. The volume of original soil and
stone shifted at each site averaged 0.3 m3 (ranging from 0.29 to
0.32 m3 ) per meter of road length in the technique that combined
a cantilevered slab road with bridge supports and 0.55 m3 (rang-
ing from 0.28 to 0.60 m3 ) in the technique with a cantilevered slab

Table 1
Vegetation conservation resulting from road construction using the two cliff highway techniques.

Plot no. Plot length (m) Vegetation damage (m2 ) Improvement (%)

New technique Conventional technique

Cantilevered slab road combined with bridge supports

K34 + 339 49.0 7.9 556 98.6
K35 + 025 204.0 29.4 1566 98.1
K35 + 167 59.0 9.1 32 71.7
K35 + 394 60.0 9.1 32 71.7

Average 93.0 13.9 546.5 97.5***

Cantilevered slab road

K32 + 385 14.0 4.6 36.6 87.5
K32 + 729 53.0 21.9 602.4 96.4
K32 + 325 35.0 1.8 33.8 94.6
K32 + 360 25.0 2.6 34.6 92.6

Average 31.8 8.3 177.4 95.3***

All sites combined 62.4 11.1 362.0 96.9***

Notes: Values for the conventional technique at the study sites were estimated using data provided by the Highway Design Institute, Hubei Province. Values for the new
techniques differ significantly from those in the conventional technique (F-test).
***
p < 0.0001.
 S. Cao et al. / Landscape and Urban Planning 94 (2010) 228–233 231

Table 2
Volumes of soil and stone that must be shifted at each site during road construction using the two cliff highway techniques.

Plot no. Plot length (m) Volume of soil and stone shifted (m3 ) Improvement (%)

New techniques Conventional technique

Cantilevered slab road combined with bridge supports

K34 + 339 49.0 15.8 1455 98.9
K35 + 025 204.0 58.8 3458 98.3
K35 + 167 59.0 18.1 351 94.8
K35 + 394 60.0 18.1 64 71.7

Average 93.0 27.7 1332 97.9***

Cantilevered slab road

K32 + 385 14.0 8.4 126.0 93.3
K32 + 729 53.0 28.7 1551.7 98.1
K32 + 325 35.0 9.8 352.8 97.2
K32 + 360 25.0 9.8 254.8 96.2

Average 31.8 17.5 571.3 96.9***

All sites combined 62.4 21.3 951.7 97.8***

Notes: Values for the conventional technique at the study sites were estimated using data provided by the Highway Design Institute, Hubei Province. Values for the new
techniques differ significantly from those in the conventional technique (F-test).
***
p < 0.0001.

road (Table 2); these values compare with 14.3 and 18.0 m3 , respec-
tively, for conventional road construction at the two types of sites.
For all eight sites combined, this amounted to 97.8% less distur-
bance (ranging from 71.7 to 98.9% less) than in the conventional
road construction technique. In addition, the conventional tech-
nique would have required importing 7614 m3 of soil and stone
material from borrow pits at some distance from the construction
sites, leading to additional impacts elsewhere in the region.
A technique must be environmentally appropriate, but for a
developing country such as China, it must also be economically
viable. Our results indicated that the new techniques can also sig-
nificantly decrease the cost of road construction in cliff areas. The
cost of road construction averaged 817 RMB (ranging from 701 to
937 RMB)/m of road length in the technique that combined a can-
tilevered slab road with bridge supports and 199 RMB (ranging
from 179 to 283 RMB)/m in the cantilevered slab road technique
(Table 3); these values compare with costs of 986 and 1381 RMB/m,
respectively, for conventional construction at the same sites. For all
eight sites combined, the cost reduction from using the new tech-
niques averaged 39.4%, with reductions of 17.4% for the technique
that combined a cantilevered slab road with bridge supports and
Table 3
Total construction costs for road construction using the two cliff highway techniques.
85.6% for the cantilevered slab road technique. This cost compar-
ison becomes even more favorable if we remove the costs for the
longest section of road (plot K35 + 025), where road construction
would have been less expensive using the conventional technique.
4. Discussion
Transportation has multifaceted and often severe impacts on
the environment (Jaarsma et al., 2006). As a result of China’s rapid
economic development and growth, an extensive road network is
being constructed in many regions (Xu et al., 2006), and this con-
struction has the potential to create severe environmental impacts.
One particular concern in mountainous terrain is that sediments
eroded from construction sites can be delivered into streams and
rivers (Lane and Sheridan, 2002). Compared with the conventional
construction technique, the new techniques described in this paper
disturb much less of the construction site and its vegetation, and
this should reduce the risks of erosion and of sedimentation of
streams and rivers near the construction site. Although we could
not measure the actual quantity of erosion at our study sites, it
nonetheless appears likely that the new techniques will improve

Plot no. Plot length (m) Cost (1000 RMB) Improvement (%)

New techniques Conventional technique

Cantilevered slab road combined with bridge supports

K34 + 339 49.0 39.0 50.9 23.4
K35 + 025 204.0 167.3 121.0 −38.3
K35 + 167 59.0 41.4 97.0 57.3
K35 + 394 60.0 56.2 99.0 43.2

Average 93.0 76.0 92.0 17.4

Cantilevered slab road

K32 + 385 14.0 4.0 23.1 82.9
K32 + 729 53.0 10.2 53.3 80.9
K32 + 325 35.0 6.3 57.8 89.1
K32 + 360 25.0 4.9 41.3 88.2

Average 31.8 6.3 43.9 85.6**

All sites combined 62.4 41.1 67.9 39.4

Notes: Values for the conventional technique at the study sites were estimated using data provided by the Highway Design Institute, Hubei Province. Values for the new
techniques differ significantly from those in the conventional technique (F-test). To withstand both heavy vehicle traffic and natural hazards such as earthquakes, the longest
section of road (plot K35 + 025) met more demanding design criteria and the cost was increased by the more demanding physiognomy and landscape conditions (Appendix
C).
**
p < 0.01.
232 S. Cao et al. / Landscape and Urban Planning 94 (2010) 228–233
soil conservation and environmental protection by reducing the
vulnerability of the sites to erosion.
To effectively control erosion on roadside slopes and reduce its
adverse ecological impacts, the focus in conventional road con-
struction has mostly been on stabilizing slopes to improve road
safety and on the engineering aspects of side-slope design (Yang et
al., 2000; Luo, 2002), and less attention has been paid to the eco-
logical aspects of road design. Disturbance and edge effects mainly
result from damage caused by infrastructure construction and use.
Physical disturbance appears during construction activities, when
soils and the landscape relief are modified most severely, thereby
altering the vegetation even at relatively long distances from the
road (Jaarsma et al., 2006). Therefore, the fact that the new con-
struction techniques produced less physical disturbance suggests
that both will improve environmental protection. In addition, the
new techniques reduced damage to the original vegetation, thereby
greatly reducing the visual impact of the road construction. Grow-
ing interest in biodiversity conservation during road construction
(Bischoff, 1995) will no doubt make the new techniques increas-
ingly attractive to road builders. Although we did not quantify the
visual impact of the road construction, and although roads them-
selves are not inherently attractive, the visual impact is strongly
affected by changes in the vegetation cover at the construction site
and by signs of damage to natural structures such as the cliff face.
Since much less vegetation was affected by the new techniques and
the proportion of the site disturbed by construction activities was
also much lower, the new techniques should also have lower per-
ceived visual impacts than conventional construction techniques.
The cliff areas in the present study are generally located far from
large cities, though there is a certain degree of human occupation
of nearby areas, thus they are endowed with unique abiotic, biotic,
esthetic, and cultural attributes that may have been lost in urban-
ized areas. However, even when the species at the study sites can be
found elsewhere in the region, the landscape mosaics they repre-
sent may differ from those of areas with similar species elsewhere
in the region, and this difference has important implications for
conservation management and the configuration of habitat patches
(Jodice et al., 1999; Sergio et al., 2003). Therefore, if the use of
cliff roads such as those described in the present study can help
to protect both rare species and unique landscape mosaics, it will
offer many advantages in terms of environmental protection. In
tourist areas, conservation of the region’s natural and cultural her-
itage may even contribute to the development of ecotourism. The
views from cliff roads are spectacular, and the experience of driv-
ing (or being driven) along them has considerable tourism value.
There will therefore be a growing number of cliff roads in the world
where the spectacular view is a major draw for tourists. In such
areas, the basic objectives of road construction must include pro-
tection of biodiversity, careful control of the construction process
and subsequent cleanup of the site, and sustainability of the natural
resources in the construction area (Boclin and Mello, 2006). These
goals must be complemented by the need for cultural conservation
and tourism development.
The choice of construction technique at a given site typically
depends on the construction cost, ease of construction, and design
goals for the road. For example, the cost should be not exceed the
investor’s ability to pay, the techniques must be feasible based on
the physiognomy and landscape, and the design criteria must allow
the road to withstand both heavy vehicle traffic and natural hazards
such as earthquakes. These considerations may lead planners to
add bridge supports to a cantilever road or to choose conventional
road construction instead of the cantilever technique. However,
improvements to highway infrastructure have both systemic and
local impacts that must be accounted for in future road designs
(Kanaroglou et al., 1998). Elements of the natural setting have
esthetic qualities that are clearly appreciated by users of the roads
(Froment and Domon, 2006). The Chinese cliffside road construc-
tion practices described in this paper demonstrate that improving
the technology used in road construction can reduce both con-
struction costs and environmental damage, thereby balancing the
need to improve communication between regions with the need
for ecological conservation. This is particularly important for cliff
ecosystems, which are more fragile than other ecosystems.
In China, many roads must be capable of supporting the heavy
loads imposed by large trucks transporting materials from one end
of the country to the other. The use of cantilevered roads, where
the rock face adds support for the road, and the addition of bridge
supports where roads engineers judge this to be necessary, will
increase the capacity of roads constructed using the techniques
described in this paper. Although the present study suggests that
the roads will perform as well as conventional roads when they
are designed to withstand both heavy vehicle traffic and natu-
ral hazards such as earthquakes, travel speeds and gross vehicle
weights should be limited as is done for travel on conventional
bridges. Because slab-on-girder bridges play an important role in
highway transportation systems, these designs have raised con-
siderable interest in studies of bridge–vehicle interactions (Green
and Cebon, 1994; Kim and Nowak, 1997; Caia et al., 2007). It is
likely that most of this research can be applied to the design of cliff
roads, but these roads will have unique design needs that can only
be identified through additional research. In particular, researchers
will need to carefully consider the predicted traffic on these roads,
in terms of both the number of vehicles and their weights, to deter-
mine whether restrictions on vehicle traffic will be required, or
whether engineering solutions can be found; for example, some
slopes incapable of supporting heavy vehicles may require alterna-
tive approaches such as the construction of tunnels. In addition, the
earthquake risk must be considered when cliff roads are designed
because many of the cliff areas that would otherwise be suitable for
the use of cliff roads are located in regions with a high earthquake
frequency; for example, the Wenchuan earthquake that occurred
in a cliff area in Sichuan Province in May 2008 destroyed all con-
ventional roads in the area. It will therefore be necessary to study
the capacity of cliff roads to resist earthquake damage.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Science and Technology Pro-
gram of Ministry of Communications of China (20083180086). We
thank Geoffrey Hart of Canada for his help in writing this paper.
We also thank the Highway Device Institute of Hubei Province for
their support during the road design projects. We are also grateful
for the comments and criticisms of an anonymous reviewer.
Appendix A.
Photograph of a typical cliff path in a modern Chinese park.
 S. Cao et al. / Landscape and Urban Planning 94 (2010) 228–233
Appendix B.
Photograph of a typical site where the cantilevered slab roads
were constructed on near-vertical slopes.
Appendix C.
Photograph of a typical site where bridge supports were added
because the slope beneath the road was sufficiently shallow to per-
mit the installation and effective use of these structures.
233
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