Browsing by Subject "Käytäväharvennus"

Wood reserves and growth in Finland’s forests are greater than ever. The 12th National Forest Inventory (NFI12) 2014–2017 measured the volume of trees at 2.5 billion cubic meters and the annual growth rate at 107 million cubic meters. The results showed that forest regeneration was well managed, but there was room for improvement in the care of seedlings and young stands. The late tending of seedling stands increased about 11% compared to the previous NFI11 inventory in 2009–2013. Costs of tending seedling stands and for first thinning in young stands are high. Harvesting costs for thinning from below methods including forest haulage constitute over half of all expenses. Reducing forest management costs is one of the most important goals in Finnish forestry. Using a boom-corridor thinning method would improve the cost-effectiveness of harvesting timber and wood bioenergy. The purpose of this study was to examine the time required for boom-corridor thinning methods and productivity of the mechanical first thinning in young pine forests in the existing harvesting technologies and well as to compare the productivity and costs of harvesting to the traditional practice of thinning from below. The study was performed for a project of the Natural Resources Institute Finland (LUKE) that studied boom-corridor thinning as a harvesting method for the first mechanical thinning of young Scots pines. The boom-corridor thinning development project was implemented in 2017–2018 as part of the rural development plans for North Karelia, Central Finland, and Northern Finland in 2014–2020. The objective was to sustainably manage forest resources and support renewable energy production. Study was made of Konnevesi test stands’ time study material and the tree database. The study compared the time required by three thinning methods: boom-corridor thinning in which the corridor location was tagged beforehand, boom-corridor thinning in which the operator selected the corridor location, and traditional thinning from below. A Ponsse Beaver harvester equipped with a Ponsse H6 harvester head was used in the Konnevesi test stands to thin by single tree harvesting. Time study and comparative research shows that boom-corridor thinning was more productive and economical than traditional thinning from below. For boom-corridor thinning method M2, in which the location of a corridor was tagged, the productivity E₀ was 18% higher than the traditional thinning from below method, when the average density of the removed trees were18 % bigger than harvesting from below. For boom-corridor thinning method M3, in which the operator chose the location of a corridor, the productivity E₀ was 4,5% lower than the traditional thinning from below method, when the average density of the removed trees was 26% lower than the other thinning methods. For boom-corridor thinning methods M2 and M3, productivity E₀ was 6,7% higher than the traditional thinning from below method. The statistical analysis shows that the differences between the harvesting methods correlate with the stem size, which was bigger in the boom-corridor thinning methods than the thinning from below, especially in the treatment M2.The boom-corridor thinning method M2 unit costs €/m³ were 15% lower than those of the traditional thinning from below method. For boom-corridor thinning method M3, joint average unit costs €/m³ were 5% higher than those of traditional thinning from below method M1 and 20 % higher than boom-corridor thinning method M2. The study concluded that boom-corridor thinning is a productive harvesting method worth developing for the first thinning of young forests. Using boom-corridor thinning methods will reduce costs of first thinning forests significantly. Compared to previous research, the main results of this study were similar, with a 16% increase in productivity. Other studies suggest productivity could be doubled with technology developed for boom-corridor thinning.