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Climate change adaptation for resource roads

Last updated on February 26, 2024

Climate change impacts can result in significant damages to resource road infrastructure which may be disruptive to road access and costly to repair. Storm flood damage on public and resource roads are illustrative examples. Although storms are a normal occurrence, climate change has caused storm events to happen more frequently and with increased intensity.

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A Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment Approach for Resource Roads - FPInnovations

Climate Vulnerability Forest Management Tool on the FPI website

The Climate Vulnerability Forest Management (CVFM) tool summarizes climate change information most relevant to BC forestry operations. Intended to inform development of climate change adaptation plans and policies the tool has two components:

  1. Climate Change Maps: historical and projection period climate change maps for six types of climate events to which forest operations are vulnerable; and
  2. Adaptation within Forestry: a list of the types of forest operations that are vulnerable to climate events, along with examples of various types of adaptation measures used by BC forest operations.

Climate Change Impacts to BC Forest Operations: Update on Research (PDF, 3 MB) - Webinar Dec 14, 2021

This webinar will be an update on FPInnovations climate change activities through the corporate agreement with the ministry and will emphasize resource roads in a review of FPInnovations' recent and ongoing work on regional climate change assessments for BC forest operations.

Assessments were done by:

  1. summarizing the highest resolution projection data for relevant and available climate events, and then

  2. structuring regional workshops to identify activities within silviculture, resource roads, and transportation impacted by these events, based on experience and local knowledge.

Ongoing effort is focused on developing a tool to guide professionals in identification and interpretation of climate change projections as they relate to forest operation vulnerabilities for a given region.

Research Report - February 2020 (PDF, 541 KB) 

Given the benefits that resource roads provide to economic and social well-being, it is important to understand the impacts of a changing climate on resource roads and infrastructure. The forest industry and governments move toward creating resource roads that are resilient to climate change. An early step in the adaptive management process is to assess the risks and vulnerabilities of infrastructure to climate change.

This report provides the recommendations and considerations for applying a vulnerability assessment to resource roads.

 

Accounting for Climate Change Impacts in the Design of Resource Road Crossings - FPInnovations

  1. Tools to Account for Climate Change Impacts on Small Stream Resource Road Crossings in British Columbia
  1. Accounting for Climate Change Impacts in the Design of Resource Road Crossings.  Scaling IDF Curves to account for climate change in resource road stream crossings: An approach for estimating future extreme rainfall (webinar #8). March 10, 2022
  1. Updates and Developments in Climate Change Tools for BC + Case Study from the Southern Interior, June 18, 2020:
  2. Case Studies from Northern BC + Design Flood Hydrology Practices for BC Resource Road Crossings, June 23, 2020:
  3. From Snowmelt to Streamflow: Data Portals for Future Hydrologic Conditions + Discussion: Climate Change Tools, Needs for Crossings Design, June 25, 2020:
  4. Final Webinar in Series - Two Case Studies in Coastal BC - January 14, 2021:

Climate Change at a small watershed scale with a focus on Resource Road Stream Crossings 

  1. Climate change Impacts at a Small Watershed Scale - February 6, 2020:
  2. Climate Tools; What are they good for? February 13, 2020:
  3. Rainfall Intensity Duration Frequency Curves for Future Climate Scenarios: A Publicly Accessible Computer Tool - February 27, 2020:
 

Other reports and presentations

 

Pilot PIEVC projects

Three pilot projects were completed on Forest Service roads (FSR), in collaboration with Sea-to-Sky, Okanagan-Shuswap, and Prince George Resource Districts focused on climate change vulnerability of resource road infrastructure.

The PIEVC protocol is a climate adaptation assessment process developed by the Public Infrastructure Engineering Vulnerability Committee (PIEVC). The PIEVC protocol provides a structured methodology for assessing infrastructure for climate change vulnerability. So modifications to processes and procedures can be identified in planning, design, maintenance and implementation.

The PIEVC protocol entails the engagement of stakeholders, as participants in a workshop, that are knowledgeable with the subject road having used, maintained and administered it. The participants contribute to the process by exercising judgement based on their knowledge of the road and how it has reacted to inputs, such as previous storms and other management applications. The ministry of Forests engaged with the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure to assist with leading the delivery of the first PIEVC cased study on the In-SHUCK-ch FSR. Because of their leadership and experience with applying the process on numerous segments of public highway.

The pilot projects consisted of applying the PIEVC protocol to specific segments of road, the In-SHUCK-ch FSR in the Coast Area, the Tum Tum (FSR) in the South Area, and the Willow FSR in the North Area. The PIEVC methodology is roughly as follows:

  1. Identify road infrastructure elements
  2. Consider the reaction of the infrastructure elements to specific climate factors and projected changes to those factors due to climate change (conducted by those familiar with design, administration, maintenance and construction of the subject road)
  3. Analyze vulnerability of various road infrastructure elements (given climate factors)

Although the PIEVC protocol is a case study approach, the outcomes of the pilot PIEVC projects are intended to help define steps to better address climate change adaptation considerations for resource roads in the future.

PIEVC workshop background

The following background webinars were delivered to the In-SHUCK-ch FSR PIEVC workshop participants:

Climate change
Climate change and resource roads

The impacts of a changing climate can affect resource roads and the communities that use them.