An impact of opening a forest stand with skidding trails on the disturbance to outer soil layers caused by mechanised timber harvesting
Journal Title: Forestry Letters - Year 2016, Vol 109, Issue
Abstract
This paper covers a comparison of the extent of damage to outer soil layers caused by timber harvesting between a stand opened with a regular network of skidding trails, and a stand where no skidding trails had been established. The field research were carried out in two forest stands, where logging works were performed by the John Deere 117E harvester and the Timberjack 1010B forwarder. In the first stand, marked as stand A, skidding trails with a width of 4 m were established, spaced at a distance of 20 m from one another, whereas in the other stand, named B, there were no skidding trails demarcated, and it was the harvester's operator who chose the routes for the machine to relocate. Directly after the logging works had been completed the dimensions of soil damage, such as wheel-ruts and furrows, were measured (length, width and depth). Moreover, the degree of soil disturbance in the nodes of a network of squares was determined, using a six-degree, ascending scale, where the first degree stood for undisturbed soil, and the sixth degree was for compacted soil. A specific trait of the factual routes of logging machines in the stand B was that except for regular skidding trails, running throughout the entire research area, there were also blind trails of lower category. The density of skidding trails in the stand A amounted to 510.25 m×ha-1, while in the stand B it was 567.13 m×ha-1. The predominant type of soil damage recorded in both of the stands were wheel-ruts. With regard to the trial plot with a regular network of skidding trails, the disturbances in question took up an area of nearly 330 m2×ha-1, while in the stand with no access provided the area of wheel-ruts was greater by 32%, taking up over 430 m2×ha-1. The analysis of soil condition in the nodes of the network of squares revealed that the greatest differences between the both research areas where those in shares of the nodes classified as undisturbed or with compacted soil. In both of the stands undisturbed soil prevailed, however in the stand A its share was significantly greater, amounting to over 70%, while in the stand B it slightly exceeded 50%. The second most frequent type of damage was soil compaction, recorded over ca. 17% of the entire research area in the stand A, and more than 26% in the stand B. The field research, calculations and statistical analyses proved explicitly that during mechanised logging operations relocating forest machines along the previously established skidding trails, constituting a regular network of forest roads, was more favourable for the environment, in terms of protection of outer soil layers.
Authors and Affiliations
Dariusz Kulak, Krzysztof Leszczyński, Arkadiusz Stańczykiewicz, Grzegorz Szewczyk
Keywords
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