Results
Research programme results indicate significant opportunities to enhance efficiency and achieve cost savings across several sectors of silviculture.
The research programme has concerned itself intensively with research into, and the development of, new types of planting machines. Studies indicate that new innovations in machinery can yield cost savings as high as 20-30% in forest planting. At present, costs associated with the mechanical tending of seedling stands exceed those of the same work performed by forest workers, but new machines and the operating models based on them are under continuous development.The quality/cost ratio of forest cultivation can also be significantly improved by utilising continuously working soil scarifiers at planting sites, from where the biomass comprising tree stumps and slash has been collected for energy purposes.
Studies concerning the costs and quality management of silviculture have shown that the quality of forest regeneration work varies between regions, as does the price-quality ratio, even with respect to the same working method. The explanation behind this variation cannot lie in divergent natural conditions. In such situations, systematic quality management efforts have yielded major financial benefits.
A review of silvicultural operational chains shows that, in connection with forest regeneration , investments in the appropriate soil scarification method – mounding in the case of Norway spruce planting sites – pays off by the first commercial thinning stage at the latest. It also seems that in the case of the regeneration chain for spruce, two correctly timed pre-commercial thinnings of the stand are more profitable than one carried out too late.
