Environmental impacts of forest road construction on mountainous terrain

Erhan Caliskan

doi:10.1186/1735-2746-10-23

Abstract

Forest roads are the base infrastructure foundation of forestry operations. These roads entail a complex engineering effort because they can cause substantial environmental damage to forests and include a high-cost construction. This study was carried out in four sample sites of Giresun, Trabzon(2) and Artvin Forest Directorate, which is in the Black Sea region of Turkey. The areas have both steep terrain (30-50% gradient) and very steep terrain (51-80% gradient). Bulldozers and hydraulic excavators were determined to be the main machines for forest road construction, causing environmental damage and cross sections in mountainous areas.As a result of this study, the percent damage to forests was determined as follows: on steep terrain, 21% of trees were damaged by excavators and 33% of trees were damaged by bulldozers during forest road construction, and on very steep terrain, 27% of trees were damaged by excavators and 44% of trees were damaged by bulldozers during forest road construction. It was also determined that on steep terrain, when excavators were used, 12.23% less forest area was destroyed compared with when bulldozers were used and 16.13% less area was destroyed by excavators on very steep terrain. In order to reduce the environmental damage on the forest ecosystem, especially in steep terrains, hydraulic excavators should replace bulldozers in forest road construction activities.

Highlights

Forest roads are the most costly structures in forestry
Sometimes the standard design cannot be useful for determining the clearing limit of forest roads [15]
Study areas Four areas in which forest road construction work is done and which have similar characteristics were within the Giresun, Trabzon and Artvin mountain areas, chosen for the area of study (Figure 1)

Summary

Introduction

Forest roads are the most costly structures in forestry. Constructed forest roads can cause severe environmental impacts including road surface erosion and sediment yield [1,2], pollution of off-site waters [3,4,5], slope failures and mass movement [6,7] direct loss of habitat (by the conversion of the original land cover into an artificial surface) [8] and indirect loss of habitat (by the fragmentation of an ecosystem into smaller and more isolated patches) [9,10,11]. During the construction project of a forest road, the standard design must be carried out on the ground to achieve the desired road with minimal impact on environment [14]. Sometimes the standard design cannot be useful for determining the clearing limit of forest roads [15].

Methods

Results

Conclusion