Trying to get information

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My experience was in subtropical coastal plain in SC USA, on natl forest. When I get opportunity, I will see if I still have a few studies, and information on standards, guidelines, BMPs we used. Our soils tended to be sandy, but about 50% wetland, so displacement and rutting were major issues. In most cases, severe rutting will not go away, and one rutted area we looked at on private lands still had ruts from logging about 40 years earlier. Most states in US have forestry BMPs that typically address rutting, but they don’t necessarily tell all the ways to reduce it. Some ways are low ground pressure equipment, wide and duel tire skidders, using designated skid trails and piling brush and other logging waste onto skid trail to limit displacement. Some of the wettest soils in wetlands, we figured that it might take a drought to allow entry for harvest, and that might occur once in ten years. Timber, especially pine removal, will markedly reduce transpiration, so groundwater levels can increase fairly rapidly in response. Various other methods are used such as corduroy roads (logs width of road placed perpendicular before fill, sometimes with geotextile underlayment), and wooden pallet like mats sometimes. A soil scientist can help describe soil types and their susceptability to rutting. Possibly even worse than rutting is soil puddling into a slurry, where all structure is lost. One of the low ground pressure skidders was the FMC brand. I don’t remember any specific differences in grousers, but can imagine that wet clay is like greased lightning. One type of road access was made of chunk wood, with equipment that would chunk the wood into piles, and front end loaders or other equipment would dump wood chunks into a road or trail access for skidders or logging trucks. It may be important to have skidders that can achieve one end log suspension, instead of dragging logs across the road or trail surface. The US Forest Service and some states and private companies have done soil rutting research, and many of studies were decades ago. I am going to be busy next week, but will try to send some info later, but internet searches on rutting related to forestry may prove helpful.

This has some potential references. I could not find others in my files. Henry (Hank) Froelich of Oregon State did some compaction researrch, but doubt he addressed tropical clay soils. If we had clay layer, such as a pan or fragipan, we would rip deeply 18-24 inches when soils were dry enough. if not dry enough, the plastic clay soils just displace and rut under excessive weight.

http://www.jswconline.org/content/68/6/460.refs