Planning, Design, and Maintenance of Forest Road Networks

Dear Colleagues,

Forest roads have a key role in forest management and in ensuring access for activities such as recreational activities, rescue and forest fires, and forest health interventions.

The building of new forest roads and the re-design of existing forest roads can be complex because the location, design, construction, and maintenance variables must be included in the decision process. Therefore, optimal road network planning, road alignment, and road design remains a challenge.

Consequently, the use of innovative analysis methods and the increasing availability of high-resolution data, together with the traditional survey methods, can significantly contribute to the planning, design, and management of forest roads.

This Special Issue will include manuscripts that describe new methods to plan, construct, and maintain forest roads. The papers will address at least one of the following issues: economic efficiency, improved environmental performance, or improvements in road safety. Applications of advanced remote sensing to collect data, or policy for the management of forest roads are welcome.

These questions are reflected in the topics listed below. We invite submissions for a Special Issue of Forests on the subject of “Planning, Design, and Maintenance of Forest Road Networks”. Topics for submissions may include, but are not limited to:

• Forest road planning;
• Forest road construction;
• Forest road maintenance;
• New technologies including remote sensing applied to forest road planning, design, and maintenance;
• Optimum road spacing and optimum road density;
• Decision-making and problem-solving apply to the development of the forest road network;
• Ecological effect of forest roads;
• Forest road and soil erosion;
• Forest road drainage systems;
• Forest road decommissioning;
• Construction and maintenance costs;
• Forest road network and landscape.

Prof. Grigolato Stefano
Dr. Kevin Boston
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Forests is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.