Browsing by Subject "mechanized"

Tending of seedling stands and improvement of young stands are important steps in wood produc-tion, but they are often postponed or even neglected primarily due to high expenses and poor availability of labour. Machine tending of young stands requires special equipment and appropri-ately suited devices, restricting the method's feasibility to larger stands. For the present, clea-ring and thinning of young stands is mainly accomplished manually using a clearing saw due to lower cost of manual work compared with machine tending. Mechanized pre-commercial thinning further requires that strip roads must be opened, which will reduce the number of growing trees, resulting in diminished area for wood production. Trunk and root damages are a frequent phenomenon and furthermore the terrain can sustain damage. Dam-ages in standing crop and soil can reduce timber output during forest rotation time. The negative contribution of strip roads on timber output and poor forest health should be countered in devel-oping machine tending. The need for the development of machine tending and its benefits increas-es with receding availability of labour. This study focuses on the influence on timber production and trunk damages by a forestry vehicle equipped with a MenSe clearing head. The emphasis lies on examining strip roads and damages in young stands. In addition to conclusions from forest measurements, literature search was applied in studying the effects of machine tending on timber output. The corollary influence of strip roads on future timber output requires further research. The study observes a 10 % decrease in surface area resulting from laying strip roads for mechanized pre-commercial thinning. Trunk damages were present on average in 5 % of the remaining trees. Growth impeding trees surrounding growing trees amounted to 250 trees per hectare and need-lessly removed trees about 90 per hectare. The consumption of working time averaged 8,4 hours per hectare and hourly output 0,12 hectare on all sites. Nonnegligent divergencies in drivers regard-ing efficiency and procedure were observed. Attending to the education, motivation, advicement and supervision of the driver will be worthwhile in the future. Circumstances surrounding both the driver and the forest machine present a challenge in develop-ing the cost-efficiency and labour resultant of mechanized pre-commercial thinning. In the future more alternatives for wood production chain should be considered for research, for instance the possibility of entirely abandoning pre-commercial thinning after the preliminary cleaning of seed-ling stands with an uprooter, subsequently leading to energy wood thinning or first thinning.