Changes within the roadbed and the cutslope of an abandoned forest road—A case‐study from the Tatra Mts. (Poland)

Abstract

AbstractThe main aim of this paper was to determine the rate of erosion and aggradation within a forest road on different geological structures as well as a comparison of changes between roadbeds and road cutslopes. The research was conducted in the Lejowa Valley in the Tatra Mountains. The measurements of the forest road were performed using a Leica ScanStation C10 terrestrial laser scanner (TLS) with a set of six‐inch Leica High Definition Survey (HDS) targets. Based on the multi‐temporal digital elevation models (DEMs) two DEM of Differences (DoD) were created for the summer season of 2019 and the 2019–2020 period. The research has shown that there is a significant difference between the rate of relief change for roads constructed atop conglomerates and limestone. The net change for the road within conglomerates was an erosion of 432.37 m3ha‐1 yr‐1, while for the road within limestone it was a sediment deposition which amounted to 3.87 m3ha‐1 yr‐1. Research has shown that there exists a difference in the rate of erosion for road cutslopes and roadbeds constructed within conglomerates. It was shown that the erosion rate for the roadbeds was 1.7‐times larger than that for the studied road cutslopes in the period 2019–2020. Improperly designed and constructed forest roads may be subject to intensive relief transformations, even after they are no longer in use.