Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

Integrated Real-Time Forestry Trafficability Mapping to Enhance Environmental Performance, Forest Production and Efficiency of Forest OperationsThis proposal is about researching and forecasting soil trafficability at the forest operation level, at high resolution and at the daily level, year-round. The research is done at the Forest Watershed Research Centre at UNB, and is facilitated by JD Irving Ltd. It is expected that the research will culminate in the development of a generic and practical soil-trafficability-model-user interface for ready adoption by forest operations planning staff. Progress towards this goal requires field calibrations of the basic model components. These components refer to (i) high-resolution mapping of soil properties pertinent to soil trafficability (i.e., soil depth, texture, density, moisture content, frost depth). Soil moisture will be assessed (i) spatially, ridge-to-depression, by soil type (or landform type), using the high-resolution depth-to-water index (DTW) as derived from the best available digital terrain model (DTM), and (ii) daily, year-round, using the forest hydrology model ForHyM. Field work required for model calibration involves soil sampling along ridge-to-depression machine tracks and transects, following an experimental design applied the dominant upland landforms of a particular forest management area. This design and related field work involve two wood-harvesting and -forwarding machines working under 4 weather conditions (wet, moist, dry, frozen), and selected 3 cutblocks for each of 3 years.