INTENT AND PURPOSE

Forest operations in mountain forests need to apply production systems which are adapted to specific local conditions and existing infrastructure, while minimizing negative externalities to the environment and society, such as soil, water, greenhouse gas emissions, visual impacts, wildlife, and other ecosystem services. In the meantime such production systems must concern the productivity of the operations and the impacts on safety and health of the operators. In the mountainous areas, productivity and safety are important issues because motor manual felling is still required in many conditions and especially in difficult terrain accidents occur frequently. Also the most advanced systems based on the cable-harvester cannot be considered safe enough because of the uncertainty of the anchors based on stumps or standing trees.

For what it concerns the yarding operations, mountain forests represent a demanding sector in which the slope of the terrain and the mass of the material to be transported can influence both the productivity and the work safety. Cable transportation systems on one hand offer different solutions to be implemented under different conditions, but on the other hand they can enhance the risk of accident because of the tensions applied to the cables and the use of biological elements (stumps and trees) as supports and anchoring devices.

The Joint Regional Meeting between IUFRO RG3.03.00 and RG3.06.00 will be held aiming to exchange mutual recent research achievements and information, and discuss mountain logging operations in the future considering operation techniques and ergonomic and the possibility to improve both working productivity and safety of final cutting on mountainous forests. During the meeting the participants will visit a felling site in Ehime prefecture in which winching operations are based on high-density forest road network, and other felling sites in Kochi prefecture in which material is transported through the H type cable system and an Austrian tower yarder.

The Joint Regional Meeting has a close relation to the third theme (Forests and Forest-based Products for a Greener Future) of the IUFRO strategy; it also shows some relationship with the first theme (Forests for People).

Conference Language: English