The Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development (FLNRORD) has asked FPInnovations to investigate current information and knowledge for bridge fire impact mitigation opportunities and strategies.
The extent of the investigation includes reaching out to domestic and international contacts to find directly applicable information and literature on strategies to mitigate fire impacts to bridge structures. This will include review of academic journals and reports, products and methods, to find
FERIC monitored a trial of the Trans-Gesco TG88C and Tigercat 635 grapple skidders operations working in central Alberta. Harvesting was done in the summer on cutblocks designed to minimize road construction. Skidding distances were up to 1500 m. The productivity and cost of the skidding operation are presented, and the two machines are compared.
It can be observed from this review that most fire safety provisions are similar in nature, whether the Chinese, Canadian or American provisions are applied. However, the Chinese code seems to be slightly more restrictive than the North American building codes with respect to wood-use allowances.
FPInnovations studied a series of four partial harvesting trials and one combined partial harvesting–clearcut trial over three years in the Prince George (B.C.) Forest District. The partial harvesting trials harvested pine trees killed by the mountain pine beetle while protecting the non-pine secondary structure. The purpose of protecting the secondary structure is to provide a viable stand that will enhance the mid-term timber supply in 15 to 50 years. This report provides the costs, productivity, and harvesting damage results of the partial harvesting and clearcutting treatments used in the fifth and final trial. The pre-harvest stand was stocked with non-pine trees before harvesting, but was not stocked following the partial harvesting treatment. Slightly more than one-third of the net block area was clearcut for roads, trails, and landings. The trial results suggest up to 23% of the harvested non-pine overstory could potentially have been protected.
Harvesting mountain pine beetle–killed pine while protecting the secondary structure: trials to support a partial harvesting strategy for addressing the mid-term timber supply
In this FPInnovations–Feric Division project, we studied a series of partial harvesting trials in which the objective was to harvest all the pine trees while protecting the secondary structure in stands infested by the mountain pine beetle. The purpose of this type of treatment is to salvage the present value of the beetle-killed pine while preserving the existing secondary structure to provide a viable stand by the mid-term timber supply period (15 to 50 years from now). In this report, we provide the results from four trials in the Prince George (B.C.) Forest District using four different ground-based partial harvesting methods: a motor-manual (chainsaw) cut-to-length (CTL) method, a mechanized CTL method, a motor-manual full-tree method, and a mechanized full-tree method. Variations in pre-harvest stand attributes, harvesting equipment, and methodology resulted in differences in the total trail area, harvesting costs, and amount of secondary structure remaining undamaged in the residual stands. The results indicate that with an appropriate harvesting method and sufficient secondary structure present in the pre-harvest stand, it should be possible to harvest the mature pine trees and provide stands that will produce acceptable volumes of timber in the mid-term time period.
Data was collected within a burned out area on a steep mountain slope as part of FPInnovations’s Survival Zone project. The fire was a prescribed burn carried out by Parks Canada in Jasper National Park. The data collected shows that in this one instance, that temperatures and heat flux values fell within survivable range for firefighters wearing PPE. This report does not condone firefighters above a fire on a steep slope, but rather this PB was used as a data collecting opportunity.
In the Lower Foothills natural subregion of west-central Alberta, the Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada (FERIC) studied harvesting operations on nine blocks where understorey immature white spruce stems were retained as mature aspen and poplar stems were harvested, and compared the monitoring results to two clearcut harvesting operations. This report also presents pre-harvest and post-harvest stand conditions, and windthrow data for Year 5 following the first entry. Harvesting occurred in two entries: the first in the fall and winter of 1993–1994 and the second in the fall of 1998. The contractors used their conventional full-tree mechanized harvesting equipment, consisting of feller-bunchers, grapple skidders, and roll-stroke delimbers working at roadside decks. This harvesting study is part of a larger research project that has the overall objective of developing cost-effective silvicultural and harvesting prescriptions that retain significant portions of the immature white spruce component in boreal mixedwood stands.
