Cut-to-length logging trial with pine in Tasmania

The CRC for Forestry has released a new bulletin examining the productivity, fuel consumption and logging residues of a CTL harvesting system. The research examined a CTL logging system consisting of a tracked feller buncher, processor and a forwarder operating in 1.8 m3 Pinus radiata in southern Tasmania.

The results showed that the feller buncher achieved productivity of 122 m3 per productive machine hour (PMH), the processor 62 m3 per PMH and the forwarder 80.9 m3 per PMH (average extraction distance of 134 m). Graphs display the result of tree size on the productivity of the feller buncher and processor, and the effect of extraction distance, log size and slope on the forwarder.

An interesting result was the large difference in productivity between the two processor operators when processing trees greater than approximately 1.5 m3.

For more information, check out this month's R&D Works Newsletter

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