The Ecosystem approach is an exciting and logical way to look at the overall management of the National Forests. The Timber Summit held in Portland this past winter is bringing added emphasis to forest ecosystems and will likely have a profound effect on future forest management activities and funding.
Several activities, both National and Regional are currently underway, which will help define the Ecosystem approach and what it means to all future on-the-ground work including road management, development, operation and maintenance. Unfortunately, most of the information will not be available in final, or more importantly, in useable form, in time to prepare FY '94 project proposals. Therefore, it is essential to develop an interim strategy to assure that transportation needs and opportunities are adequately addressed in 1994. Engineering must become involved in the overall programming process on each Forest dealing with all resource projects.
Roads are part of the infrastructure and therefore are an integral part of the forest environment which have a dramatic influence on the quality of several major resources which exist within forest ecosystems. The resources discussed here are riparian areas and dependent species, water, air, soil, visual, and human. These resources may be protected, enhanced, and mitigated (in cases where an ecohazard presently exists), through careful road management, development, operation, and maintenance. The road relationship to human resources is primarily through the safety of the public, cooperators and Agency employees as well as visual experiences while travelling forest roads.
The major differences between the ecosystem approach and the functional approach to roads is in setting the priority of work to be done and in some cases, the design selection. The road objectives largely remain the same, however, the driving force and perhaps the funding will shift perspective from the road to the effects and influence the road has on its surroundings and users.
One of the immediate ways that roads may be integrated into the ecosystem approach to project development is through the WIN (Watershed Improvement Needs) inventory. The WIN inventory is designed to identify problems and track accomplishments through the life of the project including maintenance needs. An important function of the inventory is the identification and assessment of riparian areas in a distressed condition. Some recent inventory examples reviewed identified 30% to 40% of the disturbance sources were system and nonsystem roads. This aptly illustrates the need for engineering involvement in project development or mitigation actions related to these projects.
The WIN inventory does not address air quality, visual and human resources which are also an integral part of forest ecosystems. It is important that these resources be incorporated into the system in some manner. The immediate success of integrating roads into the ecosystem approach to project development will depend largely on the ability to adapt existing road project and needs assessments to the WIN inventory. Some examples of current road data that could be used are the TIS (Transportation Information System), unfunded '93 Riparian Area Habitat projects, unfunded Deferred Maintenance project lists and unfunded CIP (Capital Investment Program) projects. A long range goal should be to expand the inventory or construct convenient interfaces to include the remaining resources into entire ecosystem inventories.
Riparian area habitat protection and improvement is the top Regional priority. Some of the issues that are evolving which will affect the transportation system are:
You can contact Jim at (510) 825-9800.
