A simple approach on forest roads drainage structures planning using GIS: A case study of Şile-Turkey

Abstract

Forest roads provide access to forest resources for conducting several forestry activities such as production, protection, afforestation, management, recreation and firefighting. Both drainage structures and pavement should be completed for forest roads to serve safely and for a long time. This study aimed to determine both cross-sections and types of drainage structures for newly built forest roads, using Geographic Information System (GIS) techniques. ArcGIS Pro software was used for analysis in the study. The total length of the forest road used in the study area was 7920 m, where 31 drainage structures was planned to be built at stream crossings along the road route. Considering the cross-sections of drainage areas along the route, it has been decided to construct a total of 31 drainage structures, including 25 pipes, 5 culverts and 1 bridge. GIS technology produces accurate and fast results in terms of determining cross-sectional areas in drainage structures on forest roads. A simple GIS-based approach reduces the stabilization and drainage problems and construction and maintenance costs in forest road design compared to traditional land evaluation methods. Thanks to its capacity to process big data and simple hydrological empirical calculations, GIS has significant gains in terms of accuracy and time consumption and is included in the planning forest road designs.