In reply to: Thomas54 "In the leave no trace training course I had with Boy Scouts the trainer extrapolated the highly sensitive areas of the desert southwest or the delicate mountain alpine regions with your neighborhood forest. The general training was a scare tactic that if you take a step off the trail the entire ecosystem will fail."
Not a scare tactic...The entire ecosystem won't "fail", but can be significantly damaged. Cryptobiotic soil crusts, consisting of soil cyanobacteria, lichens and mosses, play an important ecological role. In the cold deserts of Utah, Arizona, Colorado