Optimization of the route of the forest logging road

Effective forest management very much depends on the construction and maintenance of an appropriate forest road network. Road building is essential to the extraction of multiple-use forest resources; hence, roads must be designed to satisfy a whole range of needs. However, careless logging and road building have been the main causes for environmental degradation in many forest regions. The aim of this study is to optimize the forest road network so that it is aligned based on results of the determination of the Net Production Area (NPA) and the identification of harvestable trees, while being constrained by information on soil loss prediction and hydrological flow direction. In optimizing the road routing, there are several matters that have to be considered, namely that the road should be: (1) as near as possible to clusters of harvestable trees, (2) away from the rivers and their buffers, (3) avoid high erosion risk areas, and (4) avoid relatively steep land. A number of software problems are experienced in implementing this procedure, but the results obtained in this chapter show how the final timber harvesting plan might be constructed for the study area, which is ready to be implemented in the forest.