ABSTRACT:
Soil losses were monitored for 4 years on 11 sections of forest road in the central Appalachians. The roads were used for both timber management and recreation. Nine road sections were located on a newly constructed, minimum-standard truck road and two sections were on a graveled, higher standard road. Average annual soil losses ranged from 47 tons/acre on the ungraveled road sections to 6 tons/acre on the sections surfaced with 3 inches of clean limestone gravel. After the first year, traffic counts averaged 33/week on the minimum-standard road and 60/week on the higher standard road. Soil losses on the graveled sections of the minimum-standard road were similar to those measured on the higher standard road.
Footnotes
J. N. Kochenderfer and J. D. Helvey are research foresters with the Northeastern Forest Experiment Station, Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Parsons, West Virginia 26287. The authors thank retired research forester James H. Patric for his comments on the final draft of this manuscript.
- Copyright 1987 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
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