Determination of the available stock of logging residues in the cutting area after clean felling using Scandinavian technology

In the Russian Federation, as in most of the countries of the world, the sorting group of technological processes of wood harvesting dominates, providing for the removal of special-purpose logs from logging areas - timber assortments. When using technological processes of this group, sorting can be carried out at a forest swath (Scandinavian technology), or at a piling place. When Scandinavian technology is used trees are felled, cleaned of branches and bucked at the forest swath, then the assortments are forwarded to the loading point. When producing assortments at a piling place two options are possible: the first, felling trees and disbranching in forest swaths followed by skidding tree-lengths and bucking them in the piling place; and the second, felling trees and skidding them to the piling place, followed by processing (disbranching and bucking) by a processor (Canadian technology). In Russia, the Scandinavian technology, implemented using two-machine complexes, including a harvester and a forwarder, has become the most widespread one. Most of the logging residues in forest swaths, all other things being equal, remain during the implementation of the Scandinavian technology of logging operations. Some of them are pressed into the soil on the skid roads, some are crushed. But the deforestation surveys in various regions of Siberia and the Far East show that a fairly large proportion of logging residues is technically available and can be collected for further use. The article presents the methodology and results of full-scale determination of the available stock of logging residues in the cutting areas of the Irkutsk region resulted from application of the harvester + forwarder machine system. The work was carried out within the framework of the scientific school «Innovative developments in the field of logging industry and forestry» in Arctic State Agrotechnological University. The research materials were obtained through a grant from the Russian Science Foundation No. 23-16-00092, https://rscf.ru/project/23-16-00092/.