Surfacing to reduce erosion of forest roads built in granitic soils

Burroughs, E.R., Jr.; Watts, F.J.; Haber, D.F. 1984. Surfacing to Reduce Erosion of Forest Roads Built in Granitic Soils. Presented at the Symposium on Effects of Forest Land Use on Erosion and Slope Stability, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI, U.S.A., May 7-11, 1984.

Keywords: road, surface

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Abstract: Over much of the northwestern United States, easily accessed timber stands have been roaded and many of the remaining timber stands are on steep sites with fragile soils where watershed and fishery values are high. Although erosion control is an important consideration in forest road construction, we have limited capability to estimate sediment yield from forest roads or to evaluate the effectiveness of erosion control treatments. This paper describes a series of studies on this subject conducted cooperatively by the Engineering Research Project, Intermountain Forest and Range Experiment Station, Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Civil Engineering Department, University of Idaho. The ultimate goal of this research effort is to develop technology for engineers to design cost-effective erosion control treatments for forest roads.

Several runoff and sediment yield models are available for adaptation to the forest road situation. These are: Road Sediment (ROSED) (Simons and others 1977, 1979; Li 1979), which is a detailed process model; and Simplified Road Sediment (SIRSED) (Simons and others 1976), which is a simplified version of ROSED. Required input data for these models is the geometry of the proposed road, expected climatic events, and several soils characteristics. ROSED and SIRSED require field calibration to relate site characteristics to parameters used in each model. These models may be calibrated by instrumenting road sections to record rainfall, runoff, and sediment yield. This approach is expensive and subject to the vagaries of the weather, and will require several years of operation to accumulate a reliable data set.

Moscow FSL publication no. 1984b