Abstract:This review was to determine a standard post-fire restoration strategy for use in South Korea according to the magnitude of the damage and the condition of the affected site. The government has strongly enforced reforestation in deforested areas as well as fire prevention and suppression since the 1960s. These efforts have successfully recovered dense even-aged forests over the last five decades. However, high fuel loading and the homogeneous structure have made forests vulnerable to large fires. In recent years, large forest fires have occurred in the eastern coastal region of Korea. Forest fires can significantly influence the economic and social activities of the residents of such affected forest regions. Burned areas may require urgent and long-term restoration strategies, depending on the condition of the affected site. Erosion control is the most important component of an urgent restoration and should be completed before a rainy season to prevent secondary damage such as landslides and sediment runoff in burned areas. Long-term restoration is necessary to renew forest functions such as timber production, water conservation, ecosystem conservation, and recreation for residents. Sound restoration for burned areas is critical for restoring healthy ecological functions of forests and providing economic incentives to local residents.
In ground-based harvesting, machine traffic can cause soil physical disturbances including excessive compaction, the displacement of the soil surface and topsoil, and rutting. These impacts can indirectly hamper seedling survival and tree growth because of reduced soil permeability and root growth. However, the extent of soil disturbance in mechanized row thinning by harvester and forwarder systems in South Korea is unclear. Therefore, our objectives were to determine the impacts of two types of harvesters, soil textures, and extraction methods on soil compaction and rutting in a Korean Pine stand. The results showed that the machine passes affected soil disturbances. The soil bulk density inside the tracks (at 0–10 and 10–20 cm soil depths) after harvester passes (wheeled vs. tracked) increased by 17 and 27% and 30 and 20%, respectively. The largest impact was recorded for the forwarding track and significant differences were observed between the track and reference locations. Furthermore, the rutting depth in the forwarding trails was significantly higher than in the harvester trails. Thus, the application of a brush mat on harvester and forwarder trails may reduce machine-induced soil compaction. These results provide useful information to help forest engineers and field managers design environmentally sound ground-based harvesting operations.
IN TRODUCTIONForest fires were mainly viewed as destructive events with no beneficial consequences prior to the 1980s (Spurr and Barnes, 1980). However, further studies on the ecological roles of fire revealed that forest fire is a critical process that maintains the integrity of many forest ecosystems and often has beneficial effects on forest productivity (Kutiel and Naveh, 1987;Brose et al., 1999). It is also recognized that the burning of litter and soil organic matter can increase the water repellency of the surface soil layer, reduce water infiltration rates, and increase surface runoff, resulting in high amounts of soil erosion (DeBano, 2000;DeBano et al., 2005). In general, forest fires and the associated heat to the ground surface affect the porosity of the surface soil (DeBano et al., 2005). The condition of the soil surface after a fire is an important factor that determines the direction of water movement and the extent of surface soil erosion (Yao, 2003).Surface soil erosion is a landscape level process, and its scale varies by local geology, topography, vegetation,
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