Annotated Bibliography of the Global Literature on the Secondary Transportation of Raw and Comminuted Forest Products (2000–2015)

Anil Koirala,Han-Sup Han,Brian Roth,Dalia Abbas,Steve Bick,Shuva Gautam,Kamalakanta Sahoo,Patrick Hiesl,Cornelis De Hoop,Anil Kizha,Srijana Baral

doi:10.3390/f9070415

Abstract

Secondary transportation of raw and comminuted forest products is a major component in forest harvesting operations in terms of economics, public perception, and safety. Consequently, there is a substantial amount of literature on this topic. The existing literature has dealt with many of the technical aspects of transportation with a majority of them focusing on improving supply chain issues; however, there are only few specific to secondary transportation issues in general. This annotated bibliography will help practitioners, researchers, and stakeholders gain a better understanding of the existing literature from 2000 to 2015. To this end, we began by classifying the selected literature into six themes: cost, roads and routes, trucking, efficiency and safety, other modes of transportation, and supply chain and optimization. Woody biomass for bioenergy production was the most researched forest product with respect to transportation. About one-third of the articles were presented in the context of supply chain modeling and optimization. More than half of the studies originated from Europe while the United States had the most publications for any given country. Most articles (16) were published in 2013. Biomass and Bioenergy published the highest number of articles (29) during the timeframe.

Highlights

Transportation in forest operations can be broadly divided into two phases
Regardless of the categorization into different research themes, the main aim of all of the collected articles in this study was to address the challenges faced by the secondary transportation of forest products
Major details on each article, including research location, forest products dealt with, primary objectives, and key findings related to transportation, were presented in tabular format

Summary

Introduction

Transportation in forest operations can be broadly divided into two phases. The first phase involves moving wood from the stump to the roadside/landing sites, referred to as primary transportation. The second phase involves the hauling of the processed forest products (sawlog, pulpwood, or energy wood biomass) from the roadside/landing sites to the processing facilities, referred to as secondary transportation [1]. Various factors influence the cost of secondary transportation including—but not limited to—the road network (road types) and conditions (infrastructure), cost of operating the truck, weight limitations, and hauling distance. Research generally focuses on the transportation problem addressing one or some of these factors, but rarely all at the same time. Having all informational aspects on transportation integrated will be of great value to stakeholders

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Conclusion