Short term monitoring of forest road pavement degradation using terrestrial laser scanning

Abstract Degradation on the forest roads have an important factor for the traffic safety and the safe drive of the vehicles. The aim of the study is to determine accurately the degradation rate of the pavement with high precisions, exposed to deformation by meteorological conditions in the short term, on the forest roads using with ZF 5010C Terrestrial Laser Scanner (TLS). Road surface model results which are obtained from areal comparison digital surface model show that maximum swelling and collapsing values occurred on depth of (0.00)–(0.01) and (0.00)–(−0.01) during between November 2015 and April 2016. According to result of volumetric analysis of digital surface models, maximum net gain volume was calculated as 32.50 m 3 (73.70%) in January–December, while net loss was calculated maximum −30.24 m 3 (61.67%) in December–November. Volumetric degradation results are compared with meteorological factors. According to comparison it was observed that degradation and sediment production from forest roads surface is related to total rainfall. Our results revealed that Terrestrial laser scanner can be used effectively in measurement of degradation. Additionally, 1 cm resolution is sufficient in terms of accuracy of evaluation. Also, registration and geo-referencing is one of the most important factors for accuracy of surface model.