Forest road engineering in Poland: current status and development perspectives

Forest roads not only enable the use of the productive potential of forests, but also have a significant impact on their non-productive functions, including tourism and recreation. Moreover, the density and technical condition of forest roads affect the effectiveness of forest protection and disaster prevention measures. The average density of the road network in Polish forests corresponds to the densities known from some other European countries. The main problem is the high spatial variation of this parameter and the low share of roads with paved surfaces. In Poland, a significant percentage of roads are unpaved, with often very low bearing capacity parameters. Once the optimisation of the road network is completed, these roads should be reconstructed as a priority. A wide range of road investments requires the development of fast and reliable methods for assessing the quality of construction; high hopes in this regard are associated with the development of road surface standards and the use of light falling-weight deflectometers (LFWD). Geosynthetic materials being introduced into forest road construction deserve even greater promotion. They make it possible to construct forest roads on a very weak subgrade while limiting the amount of material required to achieve the desired road parameters. By delaying the process of surface deformation, they can extend the durability of the surface many times over, thus reducing road maintenance costs and extending the periods between successive repairs. The problems to be solved in the near future are (1) the development of effective and fast techniques to inventory the engineering condition of road networks, and (2) the development of empirical linear models that allow the results of LFWD tests to be used to evaluate the value of the deformation modulus of the second static plate load.