Abstract
Reducing potential soil damage due to the passing of forest machinery is a key issue in sustainable forest management. Limiting soil compaction has a significant positive impact on forest soil. With this in mind, the aim of this work was the application of precision forestry tools, namely the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and Geographic Information System (GIS), to improve forwarding operations in hilly areas, thereby reducing the soil surface impacted. Three different forest study areas located on the slopes of Mount Amiata (Tuscany, Italy) were analyzed. Extraction operations were carried out using a John Deere 1410D forwarder. The study was conducted in chestnut (Castanea sativa Mill.) coppice, and two coniferous stands: black pine (Pinus nigra Arn.) and Monterey pine (Pinus radiata D. Don). The first stage of this work consisted of field surveys collecting data concerning new strip roads prepared by the forwarder operator to extract all the wood material from the forest areas. These new strip roads were detected using a GNSS system: specifically, a Trimble Juno Sb handheld data collector. The accumulated field data were recorded in GIS Software Quantum GIS 2.18, allowing the creation of strip road shapefiles followed by a calculation of the soil surface impacted during the extraction operation. In the second phase, various GIS tools were used to define a preliminary strip road network, developed to minimize impact on the surface, and, therefore, environmental disturbance. The results obtained showed the efficiency of precision forestry tools to improve forwarding operations. This electronic component, integrated with the on-board GNSS and GIS systems of the forwarder, could assure that the machine only followed the previously-planned strip roads, leading to a considerable reduction of the soil compaction and topsoil disturbances. The use of such tool can also minimize the risks of accidents in hilly areas operations, thus allowing more sustainable forest operations under all the three pillars of sustainability (economy, environment and society).
Highlights
To fulfil the relevant ecological, economic and social functions, sustainable forest management (SFM) [1] should include effective [2,3] and environmentally-acceptable forest operations [4].Considering the above mentioned functions, SFM should minimize the negative impact of harvesting on the environment without limiting the productivity while assuring forest workers’ safety [4,5,6,7]
Modern machines, such as harvesters and forwarders, have become common in forest utilization [8], because they reduce the environmental impact in comparison with others utilization systems characterized by lower mechanization level [9]
precision forest harvesting (PFH) may be implemented by using interdisciplinary concepts, integrating the use of new technologies to create innovative solutions for efficient forest operations [11]
Summary
Considering the above mentioned functions, SFM should minimize the negative impact of harvesting on the environment without limiting the productivity while assuring forest workers’ safety [4,5,6,7]. Modern machines, such as harvesters and forwarders (with wide, rubber tyres), have become common in forest utilization [8], because they reduce the environmental impact in comparison with others utilization systems characterized by lower mechanization level [9]. With particular reference to forwarding, the integration of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) technology, Geographic Information System (GIS) and the on-board computing (OBC) hardware and software of modern forwarders, as well as advanced Information and Communications Technology (ICT), could enhance the future development of forest utilization [12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20]
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