The Potential Effects of Forest Roads on the Environment and Mitigating their Impacts

Abstract

Forest roads are a necessary element for accessing forestry resources, but their impact on the environment can be significant. Forest roads can cause a variety of impacts on local wildlife that may lead to extirpation: facilitating the spread of invasive organisms, causing death or harm by vehicle strikes, and changing the behavior of animals to their detriment. Roads create improved access to forests, which can increase predation rates from hunters. Animals may move to avoid traffic noise, increasing their vulnerability to predation by other animals. One of the most significant impacts of forest roads is on water quality, through both catastrophic and chronic sources of water pollution, primarily from sediment. While it is not the case that every road will cause any or all of these impacts, for those that do, mitigation measures can be used to lessen these negative effects. These mitigation measures must begin during the location phase of the road and should continue through construction, use, and maintenance of the roads. Application of these mitigation measures allows forest managers to minimize the impacts from their forest roads when necessary.

An Infrastructure Perspective for Enhancing Multi‐functionality of Forests: A Conceptual Modeling Approach

“…Through the enablement of functions, roads can have a detrimental effect on the dynamics of deadwood volume, thus affecting the biodiversity of the forest. Overall, our results confirm that roadless areas (Boston, 2016; Freudenberger et al., 2013; Strittholt & Dellasala, 2001) should be maintained to avoid negative effects on biodiversity and negative feedbacks on green tourism activities.…”

The relationship between landscape features and domestic species on the occupancy of native mammals in urban forests

“…We believe that roads had more importance in predicting the occupancy of most species because roads exert stronger negative effects than hiking trails and forest edge. Roads have both direct and indirect impacts on wildlife (Boston 2016;Bötsch et al 2018). Direct impacts include vehicle caused mortality, habitat fragmentations, and limiting species movement (Coffin 2007;Shepard et al 2008;Boston 2016).…”

“…Roads have both direct and indirect impacts on wildlife (Boston 2016;Bötsch et al 2018). Direct impacts include vehicle caused mortality, habitat fragmentations, and limiting species movement (Coffin 2007;Shepard et al 2008;Boston 2016). Indirect impacts include habitat near roads not being ideal functional sites for wildlife to rest and rear young because of hard edge habitats, noise, and human disturbance (Shepard et al 2008;Boston 2016).…”

“…Direct impacts include vehicle caused mortality, habitat fragmentations, and limiting species movement (Coffin 2007;Shepard et al 2008;Boston 2016). Indirect impacts include habitat near roads not being ideal functional sites for wildlife to rest and rear young because of hard edge habitats, noise, and human disturbance (Shepard et al 2008;Boston 2016). In contrast, hiking trails and forest edge may have lower importance in predicting wildlife occupancy because they are located in suitable habitat, may be used by wildlife to facilitate movement, have lower noise and levels of human disturbance and can be considered a soft edge habitat (Marzano and Dandy 2012;Ballantyne et al 2014).…”

“…Roads and hiking trails are a prevalent feature of urban forests. Roads can negatively impact the biodiversity in urban forests through fragmentation and increased mortality as a result of vehicle collisions (Cole et al 1997;Fahrig 2003;Melbourne et al 2004;Coffin 2007;Boston 2016). The noise and disturbance associated with the human activities while using roads and hiking trails put pressure on animals by increasing their energy expenditures and reducing their fecundity (Phillips and Alldredge 2000;Westekemper et al 2018).…”