Measuring and Modeling Impacts of Gravel Road Design on Sediment Generation in the Southeastern U.S.
Authors: Elliot William J. , Lewis Sarah A. , Cannard Chelsea L. 
Published: October 2023

Highlights

The erodibility of heavily trafficked gravel roads can be much greater than that of low volume forest roads.

Improved designs of heavily trafficked gravel roads can decrease sediment generation by more than 90 percent.

The WEPP Model can be successfully parameterized for high traffic gravel roads to reflect the effects of weather, road design, and topography.

Abstract. The purposes of this study were to support a watershed modeling analysis by evaluating the ability to the Water Erosion Prediction Project (WEPP) model to estimate sediment generated by high traffic gravel roads, and to determine the erodibility of two designs of high-traffic gravel roads. In many watersheds, the road network can be a major source of sediment. The ability to predict erosion from roads, evaluate the effects of design and management on road sedimentation, and compare sediment from roads to other sources of sediment in the watershed is an ongoing need by watershed managers. The Water Erosion Prediction Project (WEPP) model is a widely used model for predicting sediment from forest roads. There has, however, been little information published on erosion from high traffic gravel roads and WEPP applications to such roads. To evaluate road erosion predictions, a study was conducted incorporating two road designs at Fort Benning, Georgia, U.S. One design followed a common practice of starting with a native material road and adding gravel and grading as required. Erosion and rutting on the road surface were common occurrences on this type of road. The improved design was a “graded aggregate base” design, built with compacted aggregate layers. To evaluate erosion risks for these two road designs, runoff and sediment delivery were measured from ten plots ranging in size from 63 to 150 m2. Runoff depths up to 50 mm occurred from daily rainfall amounts up to nearly 60 mm, with least square mean event runoff values of 6.5 mm from unimproved plots and 14.9 mm from improved road plots. Delivered sediment ranged from zero to 18 Mg ha-1 from individual storms with least square mean amounts of 2.27 Mg ha-1 of sediment delivered from unimproved road plots compared to only 0.026 Mg ha-1 delivered from improved road design plots for a given runoff event. Hydraulic conductivity was found by calibration to be 3.0 mm h-1 for unimproved roads and 1.3 mm h-1 for improved road segments. Rill erodibility was 0.09 s m-1 for unimproved roads and 0.0008 s m-1 for improved roads, values that were greater than had been measured on road erosion studies elsewhere that were typically less than 0.0004 s m-1. The critical shear for the unimproved roads was the minimum that the WEPP model would accept, 0.0001 Pa, but was a more typical value of 1.5 Pa for the improved road segments. When applying the calibrated erodibility values to a validation data set, the Willmott indices of agreement were 0.62 and 0.82 for runoff for unimproved and improved roads, respectively, and 0.67 and 0.66 for sediment delivery from unimproved and improved roads, respectively, indicating good agreement between observed and WEPP-estimated runoff and erosion rates. A sensitivity analysis and calibration analysis found that the WEPP model was not sensitive to interrill erosion for this application. A sensitivity analysis coupled with a WEPP validation analysis showed that WEPP could incorporate weather, topography, soil, and road design features to predict sediment delivery from highly erodible road segments. The study suggests that there is a need for a simulated runoff study to determine high values of rill erodibility more precisely on unimproved high traffic roads, and that there is a need to incorporate more erodible road erodibility values into the online WEPP:Road interface for the WEPP model. The road erosion rates and effectiveness of improved road designs for reducing off-road sediment reported in this study will be useful to managers seeking to quantify and reduce road erosion rates from high-traffic gravel roads in sensitive watersheds. Keywords: Erodibility, Gravel Roads, Soil Erosion, WEPP.