Design of GIS Based Forest Road Layout and Environmental
Assessment Tool
by
Xiangfei Meng
Bachelor of Economics, Jilin University, 2001
A report submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Forest Engineering (MFE)
in the Faculty of Forestry and Environmental Management
This report is accepted.
..
Dean of Graduate Studies and Research
THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW BRUNSWICK
October, 2006
Xiangfei Meng, 2006
ii
ABSTRACT
Poor soil drainage can cause major damage to roads, especially unpaved forest
roads. In turn, forest roads can change water flow patterns, which may lead to local soil
flooding, ditch erosion, siltation in down-slope water bodies, and the degradation of
aquatic habitat in lake and stream bottoms. In this study, I developed and ArcView 3.3
GIS forest road layout tool called FOROAD, and this tool adjusts automatically to
specifications about local climate normals, terrain, and depth-to-water below the soil
surface. The tool consists of three modules. ForVisual is a visualization tool and
produces maps of wet areas, culvert distribution and slope. This tool provides users with
a general interface of FOROAD for data loading and parameter modification.
ForCulverts is used to determine the location and the size of cross road drainage
culverts. This tool can be used to determine the culvert location of new roads or to assess
the suitability of culvert size and location of existing roads. ForRoutes assists to identify
road layouts across environmentally sensitive areas such as steep slope areas and wet
areas. This is done with and automated optimization routine to seek alternative routes
according to total road length, construction cost, number of bridges and culverts needed,
length of wet and environmentally sensitive areas to be crossed, slopes and slants, and
overall earth-moving efforts.
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TABLE OF CONTENT
ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................................................II
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ........................................................... ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED.
TABLE OF CONTENT ............................................................................................................................. III
LIST OF TABLES ....................................................................................................................................... V
LIST OF FIGURES ...................................................................................................................................... 6
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................................................... 8
REPORT OBJECTIVES........................................................................................................................... 10 LITERATURE CITED ............................................................................................................................. 12
CHAPTER 2
GETTING STARTED ................................................................................................................................ 14
CHAPTER 3
DETERMINING CULVERT LOCATION AND SIZE ........................................................................... 21
STUDY AREA ......................................................................................................................................... 23 Peak Flow ............................................................................................................................................ 23 Drainage Area ..................................................................................................................................... 24 Runoff coefficient C ......................................................................................................................... 24 Extreme Rainfall Events (I) Distribution Map................................................................................. 25 Sizing Culverts ..................................................................................................................................... 29 Locating Culverts ................................................................................................................................. 29 Test Data .............................................................................................................................................. 30
DISCUSSION........................................................................................................................................... 34 LITERATURE CITED ............................................................................................................................. 35
CHAPTER 4
FORROUTES: LAYING OUT FOREST ROAD ...................... ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED.
STUDY AREA ................................................................................... ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED. METHODS ......................................................................................... ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED.
The Drawing Tool ................................................................................................................................ 40 The Assessment Tool ............................................................................................................................ 41 The Optimum Route Tool ....................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined. Curve Smoothing ................................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined. Calculations ........................................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
SUMMARY ............................................................................................................................................. 63 LITERATURE CITED ....................................................................... ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED.
CHAPTER 5
FOROAD AND OTHER EXISTING ROAD DESIGN TOOLS ............................................................. 66
INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................................... 66 LITERATURE CITED ............................................................................................................................. 82
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CHAPTER 6
SUMMARY AND DISCUSSIONS ............................................................................................................ 84
SUMMARY OF THE SOFTWARE ......................................................................................................... 84 CONTINUATION OF THE SOFTWARE ............................................................................................... 86 LITERATURE CITED ............................................................................................................................. 87
APPENDIX A- USER TUTORIAL ........................................................................................................... 88
User Manual ........................................................................................................................................ 88
APPENDIX B- RAINFALL DATA FOR ATLANTIC CANADA .......................................................... 93
APPENDIX C- METHODOLOGY OF MAPPING WET AREAS ........................................................ 98
LITERATURE CITED ........................................................................................................................... 103
APPENDIX D- FOROAD ARCVIEW AVNUETM
CODE .................................................................... 106
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LIST OF TABLES
Table 3.1 Determining runoff coefficients based on slope percent 28
Table 3.2 Kirpich adjustment factor (k) 31
Table 4.1 A comparison of model suggested roadway alternatives
60
Table 5.1 Existing Software Packages for Road Design 69
Table 5.2 A summarization of existing transportation design tool 70
6
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1.1 Road damage arising from roadway surface drainage problems 10
Figure 1.2 Roadway and environmental damage arising from subsurface flow
drainage problems 11
Figure 1.4 Report out line and relationships between chapters 14
Figure 2.1 The GUI of FOROAD. Users provide data and modify parameters
in this window. 20
Figure 2.2 Loading DEM of New Brunswick, Canada 21
Figure 2.3 Loading water features, which include lakes, streams and rives in
New Brunswick, Canada 21
Figure 2.4 Loading the Depth-to-Surface water map of New Brunswick Figure
22
Figure 2.5 Loading Atlantic Canada weather map 22
Figure 2.6 Loading existing road network for New Brunswick area. Dropdown
menus in the top red oval control show three module controls of ForVisual,
ForCulverts and ForRoutes 23
Figure 3.1 Processing flowchart for sizing culvert 25
Figure 3.2 Digital map of Rainfall Distribution for Atlantic Canada (30
minutes event with a return period of 25 years) 30
Figure 3.3 Isometric precipitation map, adapted from Rainfall Frequency
Atlas for Ca
