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Productivity and Cost Models for the First Commercial Thinning of a Scots Pine Stand Using an Excavator with an Arbro 400S Harvester Head and a Farm Tractor Coupled to a Logging Trailer
Leszczyński, K.; Stańczykiewicz, A.; Kulak, D.; Szewczyk, G.; Tylek, P. Estimation of Productivity and Costs of Using a Track Mini-Harvester with a Stroke Head for the First Commercial Thinning of a Scots Pine Stand. Forests2021, 12, 870.
Leszczyński, K.; Stańczykiewicz, A.; Kulak, D.; Szewczyk, G.; Tylek, P. Estimation of Productivity and Costs of Using a Track Mini-Harvester with a Stroke Head for the First Commercial Thinning of a Scots Pine Stand. Forests 2021, 12, 870.
Cite as:
Leszczyński, K.; Stańczykiewicz, A.; Kulak, D.; Szewczyk, G.; Tylek, P. Estimation of Productivity and Costs of Using a Track Mini-Harvester with a Stroke Head for the First Commercial Thinning of a Scots Pine Stand. Forests2021, 12, 870.
Leszczyński, K.; Stańczykiewicz, A.; Kulak, D.; Szewczyk, G.; Tylek, P. Estimation of Productivity and Costs of Using a Track Mini-Harvester with a Stroke Head for the First Commercial Thinning of a Scots Pine Stand. Forests 2021, 12, 870.
Abstract
The objective of the present work was to determine the productivity and costs of timber harvesting and skidding during the first commercial thinning of a Scots pine stand. The analyzed harvesting set consisted of a mini-excavator (34 kW) with an stroke harvester head (gripping range: 4–30 cm), and a farm tractor coupled to an logging trailer with a hydraulic crane. Merchantable timber (roundwood with a minimum diameter of 5 cm inside bark) was harvested from a 25-year old planted Scots pine stand growing on a grid of 1.4×1.8 m. The study showed the productivity of the mini-harvester range from 3.09 to 3.47 m3∙PMH15 -1, and that of the forwarding set to be 4.07 m3∙PMH15 -1. The analyzed model of productivity as a function of individual tree volume and thinning intensity was statistically significant, but the intensity parameter was significant only on plots located along wide access trails (3.7 m) and insignificant on plots located along the narrow access trial (2.5m). The intertree distance was not found to be significant. The calculated net machine costs for the forwarding set and mini-harvester were 36.12 Euro∙PMH 1 and 52.47 Euro∙PMH-1, respectively. An increase in the utilization rate of the harvesting set to 80% would reduce the timber harvesting and skidding costs to 22.07 Euro∙m-3.
Keywords
first commercial thinning; merchantable timber; timber harvesting; logging; productivity; costs
Subject
Biology and Life Sciences, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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