http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/197772019

Advancing the fundamental sciences : proceedings of the Forest Service National Earth Sciences Conference, San Diego, CA, 18-22 October 2004

In the Pacific Northwest, within the western Washington Cascade Range, floods are a dominant natural disturbance affecting forest ecosystems. Following flood events, a major management focus for the forests, Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest (USDA Forest Service Region Six) over the past 20 to 25 years has been to fix or repair flood-damage roads with the traditional replace-in-kind approach driven to a large extent by the limitations posed by the primary funding source (Federal Highways-Emergency Relief Federally-Owned (ERFO) Program). Over this time period, a pattern was detected by forest personnel (engineering and aquatic) that at many road failure sites, previous flood damage had occurred and the fix or repair had been unsuccessful in preventing future flood damage. Forest personnel began to identify a number of problems at these sites, including undersized road crossing structures, improper spacing, orientation, location, and number of drainage structures. Beginning in the late 1980s, forest engineers and aquatic specialists, after assessing the mechanism of failure at a number of these sites, began to develop road-stream crossing designs based on this knowledge. The resulting flood repair effort was a major departure from the traditional replace-in-kind approach. By the early 1990s some national forests in Region Six were broadening their road-flood repair efforts from a site by site basis to approaching the repair work with a view to the entire road system and within a watershed context. The Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest has developed and implemented a suite of successful road restoration treatments and techniques to address flooddamaged roads. Since 1990, the Forest has experienced four major flood events (1990, 1995/96, 1997, 2003). A vital component of documenting this management departure from the replace-in-kind approach to road flood damage repair has been the development of a database that contains records of flood-damaged road sites from 13 ERFO-qualifying flood events on the Mt Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest (1974-2003). This paper will highlight some interesting and revealing queries from this historical information.

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