Adoption of emergent technology for forest road management in New Zealand

Authors: Kris Brown, Rien Visser
Publication: New Zealand Journal of Forestry, Volume N.Z.J.For. 2018, Issue N.Z.J.For. 63(3) 2018, pp 23-29, Nov 2018
Publisher: New Zealand Institute of Forestry

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Abstract: A targeted survey of active forest roading managers was completed in April 2018 to better understand the characteristics of the forest industry’s current road construction programme, practices used in forest road planning and management, and uptake of emergent technologies applied to forest roading problems. The 18 survey responses represented an annual harvest volume of 10.2 million m³ and length of new road construction of 426 km. About 180 km of this new road construction (42%) will be built on highly erodible terrain as defined by the Erosion Susceptibility Classification (ESC) system within the new National Environmental Standards for Plantation Forestry (NES-PF). Spur roads represent almost two-thirds of the new road length. In terms of road pavement construction, vibratory rollers were the most commonly used machines for compaction and total aggregate thickness (i.e. basecourse plus topcourse) averaged about 300 mm.

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