Planning Forest Opening with Forest Roads

Abstract

The article presents the model for determining inaccessible forest areas by density of forest roads. The model is based on the GIS analysis of the distances between the existing network of public and forest roads and inaccessible forest areas, sizes of excluded forest areas, and forest site potentials. In order to increase forest road density, the following must be done: (1) construct connecting roads to the inaccessible forest areas and (2) construct new forest roads with different density in the excluded inaccessible forest areas. The model provides the minimum size of the inaccessible area located at least 300 m away from the existing forest and public road. The selected inaccessible forest areas are first analyzed according to their size – plot size of at least 30 ha is used as a model default size suitable for economically justified construction of the access road that connects the existing road network to the inaccessible forest area. The analysis showed that there are still 210,385 ha of inaccessible forests in Slovenia according to the model criteria. According to the research of regional units conducted by forest experts and based on the determination of priorities for the next ten-year forest management plan, the construction of 758 km of new forest roads is planned at the national level.