Factors affecting harvester productivity in forest thinning in Latvia
2010
Petersons, J., Latvia Univ. of Agriculture, Jelgava (Latvia)
One of the key factors affecting the formation of high-quality forest is thinning. Latvia's yearly budget of commercial thinning is not met; therefore, there are plenty of forests which are not thinned as planned and this leads to declining quality of forest stands. The timber processing industry needs significant excluded volume of timber, but forest owners are unable to maximize profits in future. Extensive logging of commercial thinning is hindered by economic factors and forestry regulations. Logging business is not satisfied with the productivity indicates and restricting forestry and environmental laws. The world's leading forest engineering firm offers a variety of forest harvester design and structural solutions. The first real use of commercial harvesters in commercial thinning in Latvia's conditions revealed several problems. The most important one is how to increase harvester productivity, while ensuring the quality of residual stands. To increase effectiveness of the logging machines and the proportion of commercial thinning, it is necessary to explore main factors affecting harvester productivity. This work aims to clarify the main pressures hampering harvester productivity and evaluate the quality of remaining trees in commercial thinning in Latvia. The main results are that during night productivity of harvester decreases by 12%, while marking trees to be cut down with fluorescent colour increases productivity of harvester at night by 15%. Productivity of harvester in thinning depends on average volume of harvested trees. These results of the work were obtained through various experiments on twelve different commercial thinning areas in Latvia.
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