Large scale windthrow salvage logging is increasing in Central Europe because of the growth of severe atmospheric events due to global heating. Sustainable forest operations in these conditions are challenging in terms of both productivity performances and safety of the operations. Fully mechanized harvesting systems are the preferred solution on trafficable terrains and proper slopes. However, different work methods and logistic organization of the operations could largely change the overall performances. The study observed three harvesting sites based on fully mechanized cut-to-length systems and located in areas affected by the Vaia storm, which hit north-eastern Italy in October 2018. The objectives were to estimate forwarder productivity in salvage logging in difficult terrain and to identify significant variables affecting this productivity under real working conditions. Time and motion studies were carried out and covered 59.9 PMH 15 , for a total of 101 working cycles, extracting a total volume of 1277 m 3 of timber. Average time consumption for each site was 38.7, 42.2, and 25.1 PMH 15 with average productivity of 22.5, 18.5, and 29.4 m 3 /PMH 15 , respectively, for Sites A, B, and C. A total of seven explanatory variables significantly affected forwarder productivity. Average load volume, maximum machine inclination during loading, and number of logs positively affected the productivity. On the contrary, travel distance, load volume, maximum ground slope during moving and loading have a negative influence. With an average travel distance of 500 m, the productivity resulted 20.52, 16.31, and 23.03 m 3 /PMH 15 , respectively, for Sites A, B, and C. An increase of 200 m of travel distance causes a decrease in productivity of 6%.Forests 2020, 11, 341 2 of 14 or on (ii) passive management [6]. Active intervention strategies focus on rapid post-disturbance harvest and recovery of the economic value of the forest [7] in order to decrease the risk of a rapid reduction of the timber value due to reductions in wood quality [8], the risk of wildfires [9], and insect outbreaks [10].A common post-disturbance management approach is salvage logging [11,12] which consists of the widespread removal of damaged trees. Salvage logging benefits and drawbacks are widely discussed as it can have a negative effect on forests in terms of reducing biodiversity, increasing erosion, and reducing soil fertility [11]. Some authors report that salvage logging interventions must be planned considering the site-specific characteristics [13,14]. When salvage logging is appropriate to be applied, the most suitable technological solutions are those based on fully mechanized systems as these guarantee high productivity and above all a lower risk for operators as they work exclusively on the machines [15,16].In complex terrain and in mountain areas, with a low density of forest roads, the use of fully mechanized systems in salvage logging operations is difficult. In these conditions, the main system remains the semi-mechanized system based ...

Nowadays the spread of precision forestry has led to the possibility of collecting data related to forest machines for an extended period and with enough precision to support decisions in the optimization of harvesting strategies in terms of technological and environmental efficiency. This study aims to evaluate the effective benefit of automatic data collection through the fleet management system (FMS) of two forest harvesters and two forwarders in pine forests in Poland. The study also aims to determine how the use of FMS can help forest companies to manage their fleet and take advantage of long-term monitoring. Focusing on performance indicators of fuel consumption and CO2 emissions, as well as on the engine parameters from the Can Bus data, the exploration of data was performed following a Big Data approach, from the creation of an aggregate dataset, pre-elaboration (data cleaning, exploration, selection, etc.) using GIS and R software. The investigation has considered the machine productivity, in the case of the harvesters, and the specific fuel consumption of each machine studied, as well as the time used by each of them during the different working cycle activities and the total amount of timber processed. The main results indicate an average emission of 2.1 kg of CO2 eq/m3 for the harvesters and 2.56 kg of CO2 eq/m3 for the forwarders, which equates in total to 0.24% of the carbon stored in one cubic meter of wood.

The use of full-mechanized harvesting systems is limited by terrain factors, such as very steep slopes and roughness terrain. Focusing on salvage logging conditions, forest operations are characterized by high costs and reduced productivity, as well as in terms of safety. This work aims to identify and compare the relation between the machine tilt and ground slope and the effect in different harvesters and forwarders, based on the technology and type of machine. In particular, the machines involved in this study are a harvester and forwarder working in the specific condition of salvage logging in windthrow areas. High-frequency 3-axis accelerometers and a GNSS sensor were used to monitoring in continuous tilt and motion of the machines. From the position detected by the GNSS sensor, the ground slope was obtained. The results report that the correlation between the machine tilt and ground slope depends on the type of the machine and technology. The high-frequency 3-axis accelerometer results are affordable to detect an accurate machine tilt showing the possibility to use the combination of different low-cost sensors to analyze the operation condition of forest machines in complex terrain.

In order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, low emission or zero-emission technologies have been applied to light and heavyduty vehicles by adopting electric propulsion systems and battery energy storage. Hybrid cable yarders and electrical slack-pulling carriages could represent an opportunity to increase the energy efficiency of forestry operations leading to lower impact timber harvesting and economic savings thanks to reduced fuel consumption. However, given the limited experience with hybrid-electric systems applied to cable yarding operations, these assumptions remain uncertain. This study assessed an uphill cable yarding operation using a hybrid cable yarder and an active slack-pulling electric power carriage over thirty working days. A total of 915 work cycles on four different cable lines were analysed. Longterm monitoring using Can-BUS data and direct field observations were used to evaluate the total energy efficiency, total energy efficiency (%), and fuel consumption per unit of timber extracted (L/m3). The use of the electric-hybrid system with a 700 V supercapacitor to store the recovered energy made it possible to reduce the running time of the engine by about 38% of the total working time. However, only 35% to 41% of the Diesel-based mechanical energy was consumed by the mainline and haulback winches. Indeed, the remaining energy was consumed by the other winches of the cable line system (skyline, strawline winches and carriage recharging or breaking during outhaul) or dissipated by the system (e.g., by the haulback blocks). With reference to all work cycles, the highest net energy consumption occurred during the inhaulunload work element with a maximum of 1.15 kWh, consuming 70% of total net energy consumption to complete a work cycle. In contrast, lower energy consumption was recorded for lateral skid and outhaul, recording a maximum of 23% and 32% of the total net energy consumption, respectively. The estimated recovered energy, on average between the four cable lines, was 2.56 kWh. Therefore, the reduced fuel need was assessed to be approximately 730 L of fuel in the 212.5 PMH15 of observation, for a total emissions reduction of 1907 kg CO2 eq, 2.08 kg CO2 eq for each work cycle.

A high volume of wood forest biomass is be available at the roadside when whole three (WT) harvesting systems are applied. Besides, salvage logging operations are favourable conditions to accumulate a large amount of low-quality biomass due to the recovery of damaged trees. In mountain regions, such as the Alps, the forest’s accessibility can be a significant constraint for the eco-efficiency of chipping operations. The present study aims at evaluating the efficiency of wood-chipping operations in mountain areas based on long-term monitoring. One chipper-truck was monitored over 1200 working hours using telemetry. Different efficiency parameters were collected: machine position, collected using Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receiver, and engine parameters, collected using the CAN Bus system based on J 1939. Efficiency parameters were used to compare different in-wood or landing configurations. The results show the influence of the different location of the chipping sites according to the road network. Chipping operations in space-constrained sites cause an increase in delay time and CO2 emissions.

This work presents the development and testing of a prototype based on Arduino® board that aims to collect information on cable-logging operations based on the monitoring of motion and inclination of carriage of a cable logging system. In detail, a GNSS sensor obtains the information of the position, meanwhile an accelerometer combined with a gyroscope registers tilt and vibration information. Type and timing of phases that compose a working cycle are obtained by an automatic procedure. The results are compared with a video acquisition taken as reference. The prototype has partially accomplished the main objective: the work cycle has always been recorded with a high precision, whereas the detection of the timing of operational phases observed some limitations in accuracy.

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