Gee Mike....

You didn't answer my question the last time you tried posting this
opinion paper.....here, let me paraphrase where we left off (and this is
just on Wilson and Seney):

In early December 2006 on alt.mountain-bike I posted...

Don't YOU read the reports you claim are "junk science"? Or maybe you are
intentionally leaving out the full quote of Wilson and Seney:

“The initial regression results were not very encouraging in that none of the
relationships between water runoff and soil texture, slope, antecedent soil
moisture, trail roughness, and soil resistance was statistically significant.

The switch to multiple regression and the inclusion of soil texture as a series
of indicator variables improved the model performance.”

and later when discussing the multiple regression model:

“…ten independent variables and cross-products combined to explain 70% of the
variability in sediment yield. Treating the cumulative contributions of the
different variables to the final result as a rough guide to their contributions
confirmed that soil texture (37%), slope (35%) and user treatment (35%) had the
most impact. Water run-off (9%) was one of three variables that made smaller
contributions.”


Or did the fact that it was the initial model that had the poor fit and didn't
account for slope, etc. which was corrected by using a different model escape you?


Michael J. Vandeman replied:

If water run-off had only a 9% correlation with the measure of
erosion, it was obviously NOT a valid measure of erosion. QED

To which I replied:

You have no research (including of your own) to prove this
assertation. Please cite your source. Don't quote your "literature
review" as your arguement there was on the initial model not being able
to correlate slope, not on the multiple regression model only indicating
run-off having a 10% correlation (vs higher values for slope, soil
texture and user treatment). Also, don't forget that user treatment
(hiking vs mt. biking) has been your soap box for 12 years.

Would you care to actually respond this time?