To ensure forest management work can be carried out in particularly challenging, deep peat conditions, AS "Latvijas valsts meži" (LVM) is applying an innovative technical solution previously unused in LVM's practice for the construction of a forest road section – supporting the roadbed on log piles.

Construction work for the "Tēvgāršas ceļa turpinājums" forest road is underway in the Limbaži forest district of the LVM West Vidzeme region, within the territories of Brīvzemnieki and Braslava parishes in Limbaži municipality. The total length of the road is 1.6 km, and a 550-metre section of the road is planned to be built in deep peat conditions with a sapropel interlayer.

"The construction design prepared in 2018 incorporated technical solutions to improve road stability by using a log deck. Construction work commenced in 2019 showed that such solutions could not be implemented in the specific unstable soil conditions. Therefore, the construction design was revised to incorporate a technical solution not previously used in LVM practice but utilised in other countries – the use of log piles to overcome unstable soils. The construction design provides for supporting the roadbed on a 500-metre section on log piles driven into the ground according to a specific pattern. In this case, it is a triangular pile arrangement pattern, where the distance between the pile axes is 1 metre," explains Jānis Upens, Head of Forest Infrastructure for the LVM Vidzeme region.