Swanson, Fred; Jones, Julia; Wemple, Beverley; Snyder, Kai. 2000. Roads in forest watersheds--assessing effects from a landscape perspective. In: Slaughter, Charles W., ed. Proceedings of the seventh biennial Watershed Management Council conference; 1998 October 19-23; Boise, ID. Water Resources Center Rep. 98. Riverside, CA: Centers for Water and Wildlife Resources, University of California: Available: http://www.watershed.org/wmc/pdf/seventh_biennial_wmc_proc.pdf [2000 May 1].
Road networks have a great variety of effectson forest watersheds. The type, strength, and location ofthese effects depends strongly on the interactions ofroadswith forest landscape structure and topography. A land-scape perspective provides a useful basis for examiningeffects of roads on terrestrial and stream ecosystems. Alandscape approach considers lateral effects of roads onadjacent terrestrial systems and also effects of road net-works on stream and riparian networks. From a water-shed viewpoint, it is useful to emphasize movement ofwater, sediment, woody debris, debris slides, and debrisflows—all of which follow gravitational flow paths. Re-sults of an assessment of erosion features resulting froma major flood reveal the great influence of hillslope posi-tion on the effects of roads on sediment routing. An as-sessment of the watershed effects of roads can incorpo-rate: (I) broad-scale consideration of road and streamnetwork densities—areas with high densities of both net-works have highest potential for interaction, (2) propa-gation of road effects through stream and riparian net-works, and (3) site-scale analysis of potential problems.