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Modern-day military maneuvers, involving tactical formations of wheeled and tracked vehicles, can have significant physical and environmental impacts on the landscape. Numerous scientific studies of these impacts have been conducted, most notably the post-impact assessments of General Patton's tank maneuvers of the early 1940s in the Mojave Desert of California and Arizona. On a smaller scale, numerous studies of military vehicle impacts have been conducted on military training lands throughout the United States, Canada and Europe. These studies have used a variety of measurement techniques, to include ground level photography and in situ measurements, aerial photography, satellite imagery and vehicle-mounted global positioning systems (GPS) data to define the footprint, patterns and magnitude of disturbances on the landscape. These disturbances are highly variable and can occur over tens of thousands of acres. Because scientists and land managers are generally not familiar with military decision-making, tactical doctrine, and vehicle-weapons systems capabilities, it is difficult for them to predict patterns of disturbance a priori. Even during post-event impact analysis, a full understanding of why and how maneuver disturbance patterns occur may not be readily apparent to them. This limitation can preclude knowledgeable planning, design and repair of damaged lands. In this case study, military tacticians and physical scientists developed an integrated methodology to predict these disturbance patterns more explicitly. The goal of the study was to provide land managers with a tool for understanding how these patterns evolve, and in turn, allow them to better plan and design mitigation efforts to sustain the landscape. The methodology combines a military terrain analysis technique, the modified combined obstacle overlay (MCOO), with an applied military tactics filter to predict where vehicle impacts would be most likely. A terrain and tactical analysis of the landscape at the Combat Maneuver Training Center-Live Fire (CMTC-LF) Area at the US Army Grafenwohr Training Area, Germany, was conducted using maps, digital ortho-photography, spatial data and onsite reconnaissance to determine the tactical footprint and potential disturbance patterns caused by a new training mission. Part I of this study describes the background, theory and approach used to develop the methodology. Part II describes the field-based validation of the methodology, using post-maneuver ground observations and sampling to test the methodology's predictions. (c) 2005 ISTVS. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.