volume: issue, issue:
Given the ongoing climate warming that can lead to water scarcity, water retention has been on the forefront of forest ecosystem services. Water harvesting pits on forest roads are one of the possible engineering measures that can help mitigate some of the negative impacts forest roads have on the hydrological regime of the forest ecosystem. The aim of the research is to inform the scientific and professional public about the function and potential of water harvesting pits under forest road culverts and to offer insight into the significance of expected benefits of these objects for water retention and improvement of forest stand hydrological conditions. In this study, standard engineering methods were used to design and build water harvesting pits connected and not connected to culvert mouths and to equip the whole surrounding area with soil moisture and water level sensors. During the two-year study period, a number of irrigation experiments were also performed. The goal was to observe and evaluate the distribution of water from the pits to the surrounding soil and forest stands. Even though water harvesting pits and similar water retention objects on the forest road network seem very beneficial on paper, data from our research does not fully support it. According to our results, the benefits obtained seem much smaller than originally expected to a point that the viability of such measures is probably very low both from the forest stand and water management standpoint. More research is definitely needed in a wider variety of conditions and with a longer time frame.
volume: 47, issue: 1
Given the ongoing climate warming that can lead to water scarcity, water retention has been on the forefront of forest ecosystem services. Water harvesting pits on forest roads are one of the possible engineering measures that can help mitigate some of the negative impacts forest roads have on the hydrological regime of the forest ecosystem. The aim of the research is to inform the scientific and professional public about the function and potential of water harvesting pits under forest road culverts and to offer insight into the significance of expected benefits of these objects for water retention and improvement of forest stand hydrological conditions. In this study, standard engineering methods were used to design and build water harvesting pits connected and not connected to culvert mouths and to equip the whole surrounding area with soil moisture and water level sensors. During the two-year study period, a number of irrigation experiments were also performed. The goal was to observe and evaluate the distribution of water from the pits to the surrounding soil and forest stands. Even though water harvesting pits and similar water retention objects on the forest road network seem very beneficial on paper, data from our research does not fully support it. According to our results, the benefits obtained seem much smaller than originally expected to a point that the viability of such measures is probably very low both from the forest stand and water management standpoint. More research is definitely needed in a wider variety of conditions and with a longer time frame.
