Forestry amelioration of the skid trails in mountain forests using an excavator

Abstract

Tracked and wheeled tractors remains the main skidding mechanism that have been and used for logging in the mountain forests of the Ukrainian Carpathians.. They are applied in more than 90% of wood to be logged. The lack of adequate transport infrastructure in the forests caused the necessity of construction of a dense network of skidding trails that let a significant amount of soil de removed and dumped. Over time, such areas suffer from the erosion processes and the skidding trail becomes a channel for surface water flow. The main skidding trails which are usually operated for a long time are especially vulnerable to the development of erosion processes. The actual task of forestry is the restoration of land disturbed during the prima-ry transportation of wood. With this in mind, we have started to apply rational meth-ods of forestry melioration on the skid trails that are not planned for further use or on where erosion is observed. The experimental works on the melioration of nine skid trails with the total length of more than 2 km have been held at the state enterprise "Perechyn forestry". The technology of excavation works on the melioration of skid trails was the following. The tracked excavator moving backwards along the track line carried out periodic excavation with a bucket, slight displacement, and soil pilling in the direction of the movement. As a result, grooves and elevations on the surface were formed. After the completion of works its longitudinal profile looks like sequential alternation of the above elements. It has been found within the studies that active forest regeneration processes took place on the skid trails under the forest canopy, where melioration works have been carried out. Two years later, there were average of 85.4 thousand pieces / ha of undergrowth of various tree species on the ameliorated areas. The dominant position (85.2%) was occupied by beech undergrowth which meets forest conditions. At the same time, the best conditions for reforestation were noticed in areas of elevation (69.7% of the total number of undergrowth). There was a significant predominance of small undergrowth of different species (98.6%) that can be explained by a two-year period passed after the completion of melioration works. The projective cover by grass species on the skid trails is characterized as rare (coefficient 0.32). Rubus ser-pens Weihe (92%) and Carex pilosa Scop (83%) are the most common. Meanwhile, the latter is usually concentrated in the places of arisen grooves. It should be men-tioned that there was no occurrence of linear water erosion on all the skid trails. The findings of the study allowed setting out the advantages and disadvantages of the considered method of forest melioration of skid trails and make conclusions about the possibility of its application.

Keywords

• mountain conditions
• logging
• ground skidding
• skid trails
• restoration of disturbed lands
• natural renewal.