Winching Distance in Function of the Optimization of Skid Network

Abstract

background and purpose: Optimisation of skid road network is very important in forest utilisation because transport is considered to be the most expensive part of timber production. Designing forest traffic infrastructure means positioning its location in the forest area using traditional or modern methods. Many factors influence the skidding costs, and winching distance is one of them. The use of modern techniques gives an opportunity to forest practitioners that simulate different network variants and choose the most appropriate ones. Materials and Methods: The research object is Compartment 27, which belongs to Forest Administration Unit "Prijedor", with the area of 46.72 ha. Investigation is divided into the phase of field work and the phase of designing secondary forest road network variants in the office. Field work includes the traditional and Global Positioning System (GPS) marking of trees for cutting and the creating of Geographic Information System (GIS) database. In relation to spatial distribution of trees for cutting, skid roads and skid trail networks are laid by using the GPS. The new scondary road network is laid in the field and compared with three simulated variants of secondary road network that are laid by ArcGIS 10.3. Secondary road network is planned by using Network Analyst tools and Shortest path method that is based on Dijkstra's algorithm. These variants are simulated based on different average winching distances of 10, 20 and 30 m. results: The area of the compartment is divided into two transportation zones. Total length of the secondary road network designed in the traditional way is 4816 m, thus achieving the secondary openness of 103 m•ha -1 . In simulated Variant I, with winch pulling distances of 20 m, the total length of secondary roads is 5590 m with costs of 14352.62 €, in Variant II with winching distance of up to 40 m length of secondary roads it is 3228 m with costs of 7426.78 €, and in Variant III with winch rope length of up to 60 m, the length of roads is 2219 m, with costs of 4400.89 €. The achieved mean skidding distances are relatively similar in all variants. When taking into account the average length of the winch rope, considering all three new-design variants, it can be said that there is almost no difference in productivity and skidding costs. conclusions: Mean winching distance has influence on skidding costs, but only in variants where mean skidding distance is decreasing. Smaller winching distance is justified only from the aspect of work humanization. Small differences in skidding costs between variants have no practical significance except for large quantities of wood assortments.

A Geoprocessing Tool for the Calculation of Primary Wood Transportation Distance

“…In contrast to other methods [28,29,32] and models [11,30,31] for the calculation of transportation distances, the geoprocessing tool TraDis provides several benefits. Specifically, an application of the TraDis tool (1) is more user-friendly because the interface (Figure 6) is intuitive, compact, and includes generally used environment and commands of ArcGIS Desktop extensions; (2) is more comprehensive because the workflow (Figure 1) covers all parts of primary wood transportation (i.e., pre-skidding, skidding) and both levels of dimension (i.e., 2D, 3D); ( 3) is more efficient because the third algorithm step (Figure 3) includes unique geospatial processes focused on reducing the calculation time and ensuring the correct topology of input/output data; and (4) is more accurate because the fourth algorithm step (Figure 4) uses only topologically correct data and the optional 3D data from the digital terrain model.…”

“…This model includes two steps: (1) the path distance between each cell of the skidding roads and the forest road is calculated and (2) the SD is calculated based on the distance of related cells for each forest stand. Ljubojevic et al [32] proposed a method for the calculation of the PSD based on commonly available geospatial tools. This method includes two steps: (1) the path distance between each cell of the skidding road and the trees is calculated and (2) the PSD is calculated based on the distance of related cells, the volume of individual trees, and the total volume of winched round-wood for each forest stand.…”

Planning of forest traffic infrastructure

“…То значи да при дужини ужета од 60 метара и рачунајући просјечну дужину сортимента, даљина примицања, односно једнострана ширина омеђене површине, износи 65 м, размак између тракторских путева треба да буде 130 м (Jeličić 1977;Danilović i Ljubojević 2013;. Међутим, према Јединственим нормама за извођење радова у шумарству у Републици Српској (2002), даљина примицања за очитавање учинка зглобних трактора ограничава се на 10, 20 и 30 метара, што значи да је ширина омеђене површине око секундарних шумских комуникација 20, 40 и 60 метара за оцјену релативне отворености, при чему је остварена густина секундарних шумских комуникација од 100 до 180 м ха -1 (Ljubojević et al 2018).…”