Compaction and rutting on forest soils are consequences of harvesting operations. The traditional methods used to investigate these consequences are time consuming and unable to represent the entire longitudinal profile for a forest trail. New methods based on photogrammetry have been developed.
The overall objective in the article was to compare photogrammetry and traditional methods (e.g. cone penetrometer, manual rut depth measurements, bulk density and porosity) used for the evaluation of soil compaction and rutting (i.e. depth and rut volume) after multiple passes of a loaded forwarder using two different tyre pressure levels.
The article “Photogrammetric estimation of wheel rut dimensions and soil compaction after increasing numbers of forwarder passes” is published in latest issue of Scandinavian Journal of Forest Research and it’s available online. The article is co-authored by one of the EFFORTE researchers, Prof. Tomas Nordjfell from SLU, Sweden.