EMERGENCY ON-SITE WATER MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES: DESIGN OF CONTOUR-LOG-BASINS

Contour-Log-Basins (CLB) are a frequently used post fire rehabilitation treatment for controlling runoff on denuded slopes. They originated as a treatment that used many of the underlying principles for design of contour furrows and trenches developed by Reid Bailey and A.R. Croft at Intermountain Forest and Range Experiment Station in Utah. Subsequently, many of the design principles for these were summarized in the paper by E.L. Noble at the 1963 Interagency Sediment Conference.

While the CLB are often effective as in the emergence of post burn rehab near Lowman, ID and near Helena, MT, there are many cases where the effectiveness is questioned. The majority of cases where they were deemed ineffective can be explained by failures by practitioners to understand known principles or implement fundamental design considerations and features.

Understanding CLB systems design and implemention is fundamental to any effort of monitoring and evaluation. Any application or study of CLB should be predicted on a properly designed and implemented practice as the basis for evaluation of an effectiveness hypotheses. Accordingly, this paper presents a review of essential design principles to guide practitioners and researchers.