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50. MODELLING PRODUCTIVITY OF NOVEL MACHINE
SYSTEMS – APPLICATION ON FOREST FUEL
EXTRACTION AND LONG-TERM FOREST SCENARIO
ANALYSES
Lars Sängstuvall
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Umeå, Sweden
Dept. of Forest Resource Management, sect. of Forest Planning and Operations Management
lars.sangstuvall@srh.slu.se
Background
In long-term scenario analyses in forestry, forest growth and management activities are simulated
based on assumptions of the forest’s development and forest owner’s behavior and often
evaluated using economic, social or ecological terms. Economic aspects such as extraction costs
are considered either directly through optimization (e.g. Backéus et al., 2005) or indirectly through
simulation according to management guidelines or previous management history, or both (e.g.
Holm & Lundström, 2000). Management simulations result in an estimate of the logging potential
for the forest area at hand. Forest fuel logging potential has typically been derived from appending
forest fuel extraction to roundwood extraction treatments considering economic and ecological
constraints (cf. Skogsstyrelsen, 2008). From the very same simulations the future forest state,
expressed as e.g. development in number of stems per hectare over time, and also the need for a
particular machine system (cf. Skutin et al., 2006) could be derived. Unlike final felling, revenues
from forest fuel extraction during first thinnings are expected to be of about the same magnitude
as the revenue from roundwood extraction or the cost of pre-commercial thinning. This will
probably influence the timing and type of all forest management activities throughout the rotation
period of a stand (cf. Heikkilä et al., 2009).
Over recent years, as a result of energy policy at global, European and national levels (Anon.,
2010), the prices and demand for bio-fuel from the forest have increased (Anon., 2009). This has
lead to increased extraction rates and decreasing marginal net revenues for different forest fuel
assortments (cf. Athanassiadis et al., 2009). New and improved methods and techniques for
extracting logging residues, stumps and whole-trees from young stands are therefore currently
being investigated (e.g. Bergström et al., 2007). The accuracy of forest fuel extraction potential
estimates, both from thinnings and other treatments, will likely be improved if productivity in forest
fuel extraction is modeled accurately and fully incorporated within the ordinary logging potential
estimate. Furthermore, the forest stakeholder’s goal fulfillment (e.g. increased economic outcome)
will also increase. This abstract summarizes a report by Sängstuvall (2010) covering productivity
estimates with a focus on forest fuel. In order to estimate the harvestable volume based on
economic, ecological and practical criteria we must have some measures of the properties and
influence of these criteria. Whole-tree or tree-section logging, particularly in young forests, has
been little used in Nordic forestry and hence most time studies that are available are comparative.
Felling productivity expressed as the number of trees processed per time unit usually decreases
with increasing tree size and with increased quality of the output of the felling operation. Forest
haulage productivity decreases with, among others, increasing transportation distance, decreasing
load size, and decreasing grapple size.
Approaches to modeling forest operations not yet known using a theoretical framework
For harvesting, using a simulation model similar to the one used by Eliasson (1999) seems to be a
promising approach. The author has performed a simulation study of a harvester working
according to different harvest patterns and with different felling equipments and a journal article on
that subject is expected during the next year.
For forest haulage, a different approach has been tested. A theoretical, partially deductive,
framework for the time associated with forwarding (Gullberg, 1997) has been adapted to the
specific environments described in a number of studies (e.g. Laitila et al., 2007) and time
consumption for work similar to that investigated in the time studies has been estimated using the
adapted deductive functions. Comparing the calculated time consumptions with the actual results
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