Forest roads: a synthesis of scientific information.

Abstract

Effects of roads in forested ecosystems span direct physical and ecological ones (such as geomorphic and hydrologic effects), indirect and landscape level ones (such as effects on aquatic habitat, terrestrial vertebrates, and biodiversity conservation), and socioeconomic ones (such as passive-use value, economic effects on development and range management). Road effects take place in the contexts of environmental settings, their history, and the state of engineering practices, and must be evaluated in those contexts for best management approaches.Keywords: Roads, roadless areas, forest ecosystems, geomorphology, hydrology, habitat fragmentation, biodiversity, nonmarket values, heritage values, economic development, grazing, mineral resources, fire. AbstractRoads are a vital component of civilization. They provide access for people to study, enjoy, and commune with forested wildlands and to extract an array of resources from natural and modified ecosystems. Roads have well-documented, short-and long-term effects on the environment that have become highly controversial, because of the value society now places on unroaded wildlands and because of wilderness conflicts with resource extraction.The approach taken in this report is to identify known and hypothesized road-related issues and to summarize the scientific information available about them. The report identifies links among processes and effects that suggest both potential compatible uses and potential problems and risks. Generalizations are made where appropriate, but roads issues and road science usually cannot be effectively separated from the specific ecologic, economic, social, and public lands management contexts in which roads exist or are proposed.Across a forest or river basin, the access needs, economic dependencies, landscape sensitivities, downstream beneficial uses of water, and so on can be reasonably well defined, but these relations tend to differ greatly from place to place. An effective synthesis of road issues draws local experts together to thoroughly evaluate road and access benefits, problems and risks, and to inform managers about what roads may be needed, for how long, for what purposes, and at what benefits and costs to the agency and society.Road effects and uses may be somewhat arbitrarily divided into beneficial and detrimental. The largest group of beneficial variables relates to access. We identified access-related benefits as harvest of timber and special forest products, grazing, mining, recreation, fire control, land management, research and monitoring, access to private inholdings, restoration, local community critical needs, subsistence, and the cultural value of the roads themselves. Nonaccess-related benefits include edge habitat, fire breaks, absence of economic alternatives for land management, and jobs associated with building and maintaining the roads.Undesirable consequences include adverse effects on hydrology and geomorphic features (such as debris slides and sedimentation), habitat fragmentation, predation, road ki...

The influence of grid resolution on the prediction of natural and road-related shallow landslides

“…The total landslide initiation area amounts to 67 593 m 2 , with 9489 m 2 representing road-related slides. Counter to the conventional wisdom that roads cause the vast majority of shallow slides in steep, soil-mantled catchments (see Gucinski et al, 2001, and references therein), road-related slides account for just 14 % of the mapped slides. This may be due to the catastrophic nature of the event, which caused widespread slope instability in the catchment.…”

Effects of fire on fish populations: landscape perspectives on persistence of native fishes and nonnative fish invasions

“…Because time and resources are extremely limited, prioritization of pre-fire management activities is most likely to provide the greatest benefit to fish populations. Common examples include restoration of fish passage (WDFW, 2000;GAO, 2001), and management of roads (Gucinski et al, 2001;Luce et al, 2001;Roni et al, 2002). Even in habitats with minimal human influence (e.g.…”

Forest Roads Mapped Using LiDAR in Steep Forested Terrain

“…Unfortunately, mapping un-inventoried forest roads for such analyses, and maintaining this information over large areas can be time-consuming and expensive, especially in mountainous areas [13]. As a result, many forested watersheds lack a thorough and up-to-date inventory of road features [14].…”