Harvesting of the sound deadwood in an overmature stand reduced machine productivity and increased harvesting costs by nearly 12% in a cut-to-length system and by nearly 9% with a full-tree system. The need for operators to handle dry wood, which is more subject to breakage and thus to volume losses, increased handling times. Moreover, although only 15% of the deadwood present in the overmature stand before harvesting was classed as sound, over 55% of all deadwood was recovered. As a result, harvesting deadwood may potentially introduce a significant amount of undesirable decayed wood into the system.
Dead wood
Harvesting
Productivity
Costs
Fiber recovery
Harvesting with protection of regeneration and soils (HPRS)