Cost Performance And Esthetic Impacts Of An Experimental Forest Road In Montana

An experimental logging road designed to minimize environmental and esthetic impact was constructed in northwest Montana. The road was single-lane (14-foot finished surface, 3-foot ditch), constructed along the contour. Esthetically, the single-lane experimental road was judged far superior to existing roads on the forest.

Excerpt from Cost, Performance, and Esthetic Impacts of an Experimental Forest Road in Montana Forest managers face a paradoxical challenge of utilizing forest resources (primar ily timber) without damaging or destroying other assets of the forest. Also, with a decreasing land base available for timber growing, more intensive forestry must be practiced in the future. These facts, along the trend toward logging steeper terrain and more fragile soils, increase the potential damage from timber harvesting and road construction. Hence, minimizing the impacts of road construction while still providing for harvesting and traffic needs is essential for continued resource use. In the past few years, more attention has been given to reducing road impacts, even though some of the trade-offs have not been very well defined. In the past, roads were designed primarily to serve the anticipated traffic needs of the access system. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.