Since 2019, West Fork Environmental has served as prime contractor to the Washington State Department of Natural Resources (DNR) for the ongoing Road Prescription-Scale Effectiveness Monitoring Project, a long-term evaluation of forest-road best management practice effectiveness in western Washington. West Fork deploys field crews to service 80 instrumented sediment plots during prescribed monitoring windows and after significant storms to collect sediment runoff samples and service collection equipment.
At each plot, crews inspect the condition of the road prism and the runoff collection equipment, which consists of embedded collection troughs, tipping buckets that measure a precisely-calibrated volume of runoff, and suspended-solid tanks. Crews identify, document, and repair damage to the road and equipment to ensure continuous functionality and validity of data. Associated data loggers from rain gauges, traffic counters, and tipping buckets are downloaded to correlate sediment output from roads to both precipitation and road traffic volume.
The project requires sustained regional logistics, safe access to remote industrial forest roads, rapid response to weather-related problems, meticulous equipment stewardship, and consistent application of detailed monitoring protocols across a multi-year dataset. Despite the challenges, we are proud to do our part in monitoring the effectiveness of current best management practices and improving the quality of our road system.
