The Effect of Soil Properties on Landslides along Forest Road

Year 2017, Volume: 3 Issue: 1, 1 - 6, 29.06.2017

Yilmaz Turk

Abstract

Forest roads provide
access to forest resources in order to conduct forest operations and to extract
all types of forest products economically. Forest roads should be well planned
in such a way that damages on the forest ecosystem are minimized. The landslides,
caused by the natural or man-induced complex environmental factors, are considered
as one of the major environmental impacts along the forest roads. Some soil
properties may weaken the cohesion of the soil and accelerate the road
disruptions. In this study, causes of the landslides that happen on the forest
roads in Maçka Region in northeast of Turkey have been investigated in terms of
the soil properties. For this purpose, soil samples were collected separately
from the sample fields (SF) subject to landslides and from the areas of control
points (CP) with no landslide occurrences. Dispersion rates (DR) indicating the
sensitivity of the soil samples to erosion, and their physical and chemical
properties have been investigated. The results indicated that most of the
landslides along the roadway occurred on the cut slopes. As a result of soil
analysis, the soils of entire study area were found to be sensitive to erosion
(DR > 15) and the soil type was generally in the sandy clay form. It was
found that there was negative and meaningful correlation between DR and Fe along
with Silt, while there was a meaningful and positive correlation between DR and
Sand. In order to find out whether SF and CP are different in terms of soil properties,
Independent Sample T-test was conducted. The results revealed that there was a
significant difference only in P (Phosphorus) content while the differences
between other soil properties were found to be insignificant.

Keywords

Forest roads, Landslides, Soil properties, Turkey

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