Finished road clearing at the Junctions

ROADSM&R: 2.5 hours: 1:15 PM to 3:45 PM

Cleared off the last of the woody debris between the road junctions in South Side unit #4.

Finished clearing the road section between the first two junctions in South Side unit #4. Heavily impacted area with lots of downed trees, stumps and brush to pull. I had cut up most of the logs earlier, so it was just hand tossing and pulling – no chainsaw work today. This is a wide section of road through a section of un-harvested thin trees. Still some alder seedlings and saplings to pull out in the open section before the first junction, and plenty of dirt mounds to smooth out with a dozer or excavator later on. Took a photo showing the “carpet-bombing” effect of woody debris covering the forest floor.

Slashed storm and logging debris scattered on the forest floor.

A carpet of log chunks and branches is left on the forest floor after clearing the roads and thinning out the most damaged smaller trees in the stand. The road runs along the outside of the close-by trees on the right in this photo. This is roughly equivalent to the “lop and scatter” technique of slash treatment following a harvest. It is hard to tell if any slash treatment occurred after the most recent (2007/2008) harvest, as a simultaneous windstorm brought down far more wood than the logging debris left by the cutters.