Impact of rainfall intensity and cutslope material on sediment concentration from forest roads in northern Iran

doi:10.3832/ifor0097-007

Impact of rainfall intensity and cutslope material on sediment concentration from forest roads in northern Iran

Saeed Rahbari Sisakht⁽¹⁾ , Baris Majnounian⁽¹⁾, Mohsen Mohseni Saravi⁽²⁾, Ehsan Abdi⁽¹⁾, Christoper Surfleet⁽³⁾

iForest - Biogeosciences and Forestry, Volume 7, Issue 1, Pages 48-52 (2014)
doi: https://doi.org/10.3832/ifor0097-007
Published: Oct 21, 2013 - Copyright © 2014 SISEF

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Forest roads are important for adequate management of natural resources, but they are also a dominant contributor of sediment to forest streams and water pollution. This study measured road sediment concentration from forest roads to determine the impact of rainfall intensity and cutslope types on sediment concentration in the Patom district of northern Iran. Two 110 m road segments with variable soil and rock fragment cover exposed at the cutslopes were studied. Seven rainfall and corresponding runoff events were measured in 1-liter bottle samplers every 10 minutes at the outlet of cross sectional culverts, and from two 3 m² plots on the roadbeds adjacent to each cutslope. A statistically significant difference at the 95% confidence level between two cutslope types and rainfall intensity on sediment concentration was determined from the field data based on nonparametric tests, though no statistically significant difference in the concentration of sediment between the two roadbeds plots were found. The average of sediment concentration of soil trench and the rock fragment cover cutslopes were 60.3 and 46.8 g/l, respectively. The results reported here should help forest road managements to improve the understanding of cutslopes erosion and sediment production from forest roads and to employ suitable methods to reduce sediment production.

Keywords

Forest Road, Cutslope, Rainfall Intensity, Rock Fragment, Sediment Concentration

Authors’ address

(1)

Forestry and Forest Economics Department, Faculty of Natural Resources, University of Tehran, Karaj (Iran)

(2)

Range and Watershed Management Department, Faculty of Natural Resources, University of Tehran, Karaj (Iran)

(3)

Department of Forest Engineering, Resources and Management College of Forestry, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR (USA)

Corresponding author

Saeed Rahbari Sisakht
s_rahbari@ut.ac.ir

Citation

Rahbari Sisakht S, Majnounian B, Mohseni Saravi M, Abdi E, Surfleet C (2014). Impact of rainfall intensity and cutslope material on sediment concentration from forest roads in northern Iran. iForest 7: 48-52. - doi: 10.3832/ifor0097-007

Academic Editor

Roberto Tognetti

Paper history

Received: Mar 14, 2012
Accepted: Apr 08, 2013

First online: Oct 21, 2013
Publication Date: Feb 03, 2014
Publication Time: 6.53 months

Open Access

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

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