Modelling the water quality impacts of forest roads at the catchment scale

Abstract

The aim of this study was to estimate the magnitude of the contribution of forest roads to catchment in-stream exports of sediment and nutrients in the context of natural background levels from forests in SE Australia. The conceptual approach adopted in this study was to assume that the total load of sediment and nutrients from a forested catchment with roads can be apportioned to two sources; roads-related sources and non-roads related sources. The experimental approach to quantify these sources is shown in Figure 1. (Figure Presented) A 13,451 ha forested catchment in SE Australia was instrumented for one year to quantify total in-stream exports of total suspended sediment (TSS) and total ..