Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

Forest fertilization had its peak in the late 60´s, when almost 200 000 ha was fertilized annually. The silviculture of today has high demands for timber production at the same time as the demand for nature conservation increases. It means that it’s necessary to produce more volume in smaller areas in the future. The use of DGPS equipment has in modern forestry in Sweden become more and more common. If the positions of the machine are stored on a regular basis with not too long intervals (up to 30 seconds), it’s possible to digitize the driving paths.
This work has been conducted in SCA’s Västerbotten and Jämtland districts and the purpose was to: investigate if the use of digitized strip roads obtained from thinning a few years earlier increases productivity (ha/h) and efficiency (fertilized area per traveled kilometer) in forest fertilization with tractor.
The efficiency increased from 4,42 to 4,75 fertilized hectares per traveled km for areas were the drivers had access to the digitized strip roads. In areas where drivers felt that they had some help or big help of this information the proportion of fertilized area increased from 74,9 % to 86,6 %. Proportion fertilized area is a quota between the fertilized area and the total area of the stand. The drivers themselves argued that they had the greatest advantage of the digitized roads in small stands with easy terrain conditions and in large stands with difficult terrain conditions. The highest recorded increase of efficiency was in large areas with difficult terrain conditions, (+22%).