When you harvest trees it can be done in a few ways. Either you clear-cut, i.e. you cut all the trees bigger than a certain thickness. By this method you basically remove the whole forest and it will take years if ever for it to grow back. The other method is a scientific method that keeps the forest in good condition. Here you harvest the ones that limit growth of other trees, while over a time span of 10-20 years all the trees will have been cut, but in different stages.
When you cut-to-length (CTL) logging, then you use a harvester and a forwarder, while if you do full –tree logging, then you use a feller-buncherand a skidder to pull the logs out from the felling area to the landing. The second method is more pronounced in North and South America and Australasia, while the first is more used in Europe.
The CLT is more modern and uses more modern equipment. It also causes less damage to the forest as the soil and trees are better spared as the tops and branches are left. Machines only follow certain tracks and are controlled by GPS. The forwarded can then follow this track to gather the logs. For harvesters, you basically have thinning harvesters, all-purpose and final felling harvesters, the same goes for the forwarders.
Today it is about 50% that is harvested by machine, where of that 1/3 is cut-to length and 2/3 is full-tree. So there are still a lot of areas to both grow mechanically as well as improve the productivity.
Despite the benefits of the CLT technology the adaption to the rest of the world has been slow. The reason varies a bit between regions; some are due to education and others that the change of investments is slow. In North American there has been some adaption on the east coast, but mostly in areas that are not so dynamic that they would be growing. The adaption to all of North America might never happen or it will take a very long time. Despite the fact that you are usingfewer equipment, 2 for CTL and often 4 in full-length, where you in addition to the feller-buncher need a skidder, loader and slasher. So the machines for CLT might cost more initially, but you get the latest technology with better fuel efficiency and more environmental friendly machines. You also only need 2 persons instead of minimum 4 persons for full tree. This also translates to fewer tires. You will need tires for 2 vehicles, harvester tires and forwarder tires and not a 3-4 sets of forestry tires as you will have in full tree harvesting.
To further improve the productivity you will need to ensure that you have good tires that are durable enough improve the output time and reduce any downtime due to tire failures. You can only hope that the shift towards CLT will be faster in the rest of the world for an overall improvement in efficiency.
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