Boom-corridor thinning removal portion estimation with agent-based simulation

Abstract

Young forest stand thinning is sometimes neglected by forest owners due to its high costs. To increase the harvester productivity and lower thinning costs of young forest stand, a new thinning method, Boom-corridor thinning, has been developed. A simulation model was developed to investigate the removal portion of this new method and discuss the dimensions of corridors. In order to have real-life forest stand information for the simulation model, remote sensing methods were used to construct 27 test plots from three forest stands located in Pieksämäki, Finland. The simulation model was run with various corridor geometries and the results revealed that areas where trees are removed, called corridors, and areas between corridors should have 0.5 to 1.0 width ratio to achieve a removal portion of approximately 50%. From a harvester productivity standpoint, the corridors should be as wide as possible, but from a forest versatility and management point of view, the corridors should be narrow. This is the reason why corridors are usually from 1 to 3 meters wide. Vast result sets of the simulation model show how Boom-corridor thinning geometry affects removal portions and allows the planning of the thinning to take into account the removal portion of the trees and forest management perspective. In practice the simulation is not very useful for determining the Boom-corridor geometry and it is more practical to have the operator choose or use an area-based equation to decide the geometry.