Prioritization of forest roads maintenance operations in plantation forests through hydrological indexes

Forest roads consist of a tangle of roads in a network, which access productive areas and help in transportation of the raw material. When these roads are not well planned, they can be a potential source of environmental impacts, especially regarding the dynamics of water and sediments. Hydrological indexes (HI) allow the identification of critical segments of forest roads based on slope, potential flood and erodibility. This study aimed to apply the concepts of HI, identifying roads segments with high potential of maintenance. The study was carried in three forest stands located in Sao Paulo state. The HI used were land slope (DECTERR), road slope (DECRAMP) topographic index (INDTOP) and topographic factor (LS). According to each stand location, we classified the roads and identified them, accordingly to the critical status, as “normal,” “critical” and “very critical”. We analyzed 693 segments of forest roads, totaling 223.8 km of roads. Through a descriptive statistic and the principal component analysis, we identified the existence of two main axes representing 76% of total variation and rate each piece on each HI function. This study enabled the effective identification of roads with high potential of maintenance based on HI, and representing 12,6% of the forest road analyzed was close to APPs and RLs, reinforcing the need of proper management of forest roads. © 2023 University of Sao Paolo. All rights reserved.