- Adverse grade
- Uphill grade for a loaded truck
- Ash
- Very fine soil of volcanic origin
- Backfill
- Soil or other material used to replace material removed during construction
- Bank
- Cut face near a road or landing
- Base course
- Bottom layer of road surface rock in a two-layer surfacing system. The base course is the layer between the subgrade and the surface ‘running’ layer of crushed rock
- Batter
- Constructed slopes for, for example, a cutting or bank
- Bench
- Ledge cut into solid ground to contain fill, or a step cut into a batter to make it more stable
- Berm
- A raised or engineered structure parallel to the edge of a road or track, designed to contain and direct surface water runoff and sediment
- Block cut
- Cutting that has a batter on either side
- Borrow pit
- Area where material has been dug out. It is smaller than a quarry
- Box culvert
- Square culvert pipe to channel water
- Camber
- Gradual downward slope from the centre of the road, for roads that are crowned
- Clay
- A soil type made up of very fine cohesive particles, plastic when wet, generally brown to yellow. Some clays swell
- Clearing (stripping)
- Removing standing and dead vegetation within a roadway clearing limits. This is the first step of construction on a forest road
- Compaction
- Applying pressure or vibration to soil or aggregate to strengthen it, resulting in increased density (tons per m3)
- Corduroy
- A structured load-bearing surface where the logs are laid horizontally and parallel, with no void areas. Corduroy roads are an engineered road construction technique used in places where the substrate is very weak, and where the load must be spread if the road is to be trafficable. This can be used on skid trails or landings, or with adequate surfacing also on haul roads
- Crossfall
- Cross slope for roads that are not crowned
- Culvert
- Either (a) a pipe or box structure that conveys a stormwater flow under a forestry road or forestry track; or (b) the entire structure used to channel a water body under a forestry road or forestry track
- Cut
- Excavation within the construction batter limits shown on the drawings and above the final subgrade surface. The cut includes side cuts and batters
- Daylighting
- Process of removing trees to allow sunlight and air in to dry out a roadway or landing
- Deadman
- An object, normally a log, buried in the ground to be an anchor
- Debris trap
- A structure designed to catch and temporarily store harvest residues from flowing water. Also known as a slash trap or woody debris trap
- Ditch
- A channel often on the edge of a road to drain the subgrade and carry stormwater to discharge points or cross road culverts. Often called water tables or drains
- End-haul
- Moving excavated roadway material a distance (usually by dump truck) to a designated soil dump site. Often used with full bench construction, as opposed to side casting the cut directly onto the slope
- Favourable grade
- Downhill grade for a loaded truck
- Fill
- Soil or aggregate, placed to raise the land surface, normally under a strict compaction regime. It can be used to build a structure above natural ground level, as with fill sections on the downhill side of a road
- Fill slope
- An area on the downhill side of a roadway (or both sides in a through fill section) that must have excavated material placed on it to build a road section up to grade
- Flume
- An open channel, or conduit, made from plastic, galvanised corrugated steel, and sometimes concrete or timber. It is used to carry runoff from earthworks over loose fill or erodible material so that it can be discharged onto less erodible surfaces
- Ford
- A hard surface on the bed of a river, permanently or frequently overtopped by water, that allows the crossing of a river by machinery or vehicles
- Grade (slope)
- The tangent of the angle of a surface to the horizontal. Grades are typically specified for new road constructions
- Gravel
- Particles of rock between 5 and 75 mm in size. They can be rounded, semi-rounded or angular
- Headwall
- A wall built at the upstream end of a culvert.
- Hydro seeding
- A seed mulch and water mix sprayed onto fills and batters
- Landing (pad, skid)
- An area of land where logs or tree lengths extracted from a forest are accumulated, processed and loaded for removal
- Maintenance (R&M)
- As defined by the NES-PF, it includes activities that reshape and upgrade existing forestry infrastructure, the installation and maintenance of water runoff control measures, and/or road metalling. It does not include road widening or realignment
- Marker peg
- Placed to mark a road edge, or culvert inlet or outlet
- Metal
- Angular faced crushed or broken rock used as a top course of a road
- Organic matter
- Topsoil, woody material, vegetation
- Pavement
- The total improvement layer, including the base course and top coat aggregate
- Penetrometer
- A device used for testing a soil’s load-carrying capacity indirectly, by measuring its resistance to an object being forced into the soil with a standard force
- Quarry
- A large deep pit where rock is blasted, ripped or excavated and extracted
- Rip rap
- Rock put in place to protect a surface from water damage
- Riparian strip
- An area beside a river or stream; often protected
- River
- As defined by the NES-PF, a river is a continually or intermittently flowing body of fresh water. For example, a stream (including very small streams) or a modified watercourse. It does not include any artificial watercourse, such as an irrigation canal, water supply race, canal for the supply of water for electricity power generation, or farm drainage canal
- Roadway
- The portion of a road within the limits of excavation and embankment
- Running course
- Final thin layer of metal on top of the road to improve the road surface
- Runoff
- Water flowing from an area of earthworks or in a water table, or occasionally across the forest
- Rut
- A depression caused by the wheels or tracks of a vehicle
- Saddle
- Low point on a ridge
- Salvage
- Harvesting of an area for a new road or landing, or for daylighting
- Scour
- The removal of soil or rock by the power of running water
- Sediment
- Material that is being transported, usually by water, from one place to another
- Sediment trap
- A pit to catch and slow down water and sediment from a road or landing, with an outlet
- Side cast
- Means placing non-compacted fill or spoil, that has been excavated from a cut to create forestry infrastructure, on the downhill slope from the infrastructure
- Slope
- The ground or earthworks angle
- Soak pit
- A large hole to catch and drain water, without an outlet. Used mainly in free draining soils
- Soil
- Dirt that is not rock
- Spoil
- Disturbed material often used as fill
- Spur road
- Supports a low level of traffic, such as a level that would serve one or two landings. Also called a stub or stab road
- Stockpile
- Heap or stack of material to be used later. For example, metal stockpile
- Subgrade
- The native material underneath a constructed road. It can also refer to the finished surface prior to applying the improvement layer, such as the aggregate. It is also called the formation layer