Planning of forest traffic infrastructure

Abstract

Planning of forest traffic infrastructure is the main task in the future because of overuse of timber in the areas that near forest roads. This process is the nesseccary to prepare, support and lead by using contemporary information technology (IT). Quality of planning of forest traffic infrastructure requires analysis of larger number of criteria in order to support decission making and sustainability of the selected solutions. Forestry is the very interesting field study for using of Geographical information sysistem (GIS) because of diversity of terrain and stand conditions. GIS contains the tools for spatial and statistical analysis and its strength is in connecting different information into one whole and simple data processing. Data processing means analysis of current state of forest accessibility, planning and designing of new primary and secondary forest traffic infrastructure and analysis of achieved forest accessibility. Beside of utilization of timber, comperhansive planning of forest traffic infrastructure should be taken into account the interes of stakeholders from medicine, sport, turism, ecology and protection of cultural and historical heritage. Their needs and requairements are necessary to evaluate and used the results of questioning of stackeholders for final decision making. Optimal primary forest accessibility should be from 20 to 30 m/ha from the point of forest management intensity, terrain conditions etc. The optimal secondary forest accessibility could be considered excellent relative secondary forest accessibility what means 90% of compartment area is accessible for double winching distance arround secondary traffic infrastructure. These aimed forest accessiblities could be achived by designing of new primary and secondary forest traffic infrastructure in the field by contemporary tools based on ultrasonic and laser technology like Vertex Laser Geo and in office by softwares for forest road designing like RoadEng. At the end it is necessary to take into account economic analysis of planning and designing of forest traffic infrastructures.