ShortCUTS No. 2, 2011

2 ShortCUTS | 2 | 2011 RESEARCH FOR TOMORROW’S FORESTRY

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READ MORE:Resultat no. 1/2011CONTACT:Line Djupström, +46-18-188508E-MAIL

[email protected]

The most cost-effective way to protectforest species is to set aside key habitats– they contain the greatest number ofspecies needing protection in relation towood value. This is shown in a study bySkogforsk and SLU investigating whichconservation measures in forests gavemost diversity for the money.

The researchers have examined spe-cies and wood value in four differenttypes of forest – nature reserves, key habitats, retention patches and older forests that were ready for felling.

Greatest number of speciesThe study showed that key habitats con-tain the greatest number of species, andalso the most red-listed species – beetles,lichens and mosses needing special pro-tection. Key habitats have high woodvalue – about the same as nature reservesand older forest ready for felling – but thelarge number of species means that theyoffer most diversity for the money.

Retention patches are also relativelycost-effective. They do not contain asmany species requiring protection buton the other hand they do not contain asmuch valuable wood. However, theyoften contain completely different spe-cies compared with old forest.

All measures have good qualities“All ways of protecting forest have theirqualities,” says Line Djupström at Skog-forsk, who carried out the study. “Thestudy doesn’t mean that key habitats canreplace nature reserves or retention pat-ches. The measures should complementeach other if we’re to retain the biologi-cal diversity.”

According to the report, the leastcost-effective method was to protect thefinal-felling forests.

“But the results are not black andwhite,” says Line Djupström. “Rare beet-les were almost as common in final-fel-ling forests as in key habitats.

KEY HABITATS– COST-EFFECTIVE CONSERVATION MEASURE

Consequently, stands for final felling cancontain valuable cores. The challenge isto find the cores and protect them.”

More diversity for the money. Key biotopesare a cost-effective conservation method.

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THE BRÄNSLE-ESS AWARDThis year’s Bränsle-ESS award for thebest university study in the field offorest fuel technology was announ-ced at the Skogforsk conference,“Future Energy”, 23-24 March inSundsvall. The winner this year wasTobias Andersson, forestry studentat the Swedish University of Agricul-tural Sciences.

Tobias Andersson won the prizefor his study, “TOMO Hugglink”,which examined performance, sys-tem structure and potential for im-provement for the system developedby TOMO Skog. The system consistsof a full-sized chip truck with a chip-ping unit and crane mounted on alink.

On 12 April, the Swedish King presen-ted Skogforsk’s Roger Bergström theGuldkvisten Prize for his important stu-dies of the moose. The Swedish ForestryAssociation awards the GuldkvistenPrize, which is announced at the ForestIndustry Week in Stockholm.

The motivation was as follows:“For many years, Roger Bergström hasacted like lubricating oil, a balsam, ea-sing the friction between enthusiastichunters and moose tourists – and confu-sed forest users and car drivers. Suchconflicts of interest can only be resolvedthrough knowledge and fact-based argu-mentation. He is one of the country’s fo-remost experts on moose behaviour andgrazing habits. Roger is renowned andrespected, even among those peoplewho do not fully share his conclusions.His objectivity, integrity and calm dispo-

sition make him an important balancingfactor in the heated debate about themoose. Professor Roger Bergström’swork has been very important in theefforts to establish the moose as a forestresource – and to reduce the amount ofdamage it causes to the forest.”

PRIZE FROM THE KINGFOR MOOSE RESEARCH

Guldkvisten win-ner Roger Berg-ström and theSwedish King, CarlXVI Gustav (left).

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On Facebook there is now a page aboutgender equality in the forestry sector –facebook/jamstalltsskogsbruk. And thesite is managed by Skogforsk.

“After a workshop on gender equalityin the sector, we were given the task ofdisseminating information about thework via Facebook,” says Line Djup-ström at Skogforsk. “We hope that theFacebook page will be a resource wheredifferent ideas and projects can be pre-sented and discussed.”

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Inlandsbanan runsthrough large fo-rested areas in thenorth of Sweden.The red areas areregions with large demandfor biofuel.

REPORT ON BIOFUELSDEVELOPMENTThe Skogforsk report"Efficient forest fuelsupply systems" sum-marises many of the in-teresting results fromthe biofuel programme“ESS” (read more on p.4-5). The report is avai-lable at skogforsk.com

INLANDS-BANAN– POTENTIAL TRANSPORT ROUTE FOR BIOFUELS

The forests in the interior of Norrlandcontain large reserves of forest fuel. It isSweden’s store of logging residue andSkogforsk has calculated that one-third,or 6.9 million hectares, of Sweden’s pro-ductive forest – and a quarter of all gro-wing forest in the country – lies within50 km of the Inlandsbanan railway line.

Inlandsbanan could serve as an impor-tant artery for the areas in Sweden thattoday require large volumes of bioe-nergy. A few results from the study:

Potential annual harvest of forest fueladjacent to Inlandsbanan is approxima-tely 6 TWh, the equivalent of half thecurrent harvest of forest fuel.

In order to transport this volume,2,000 full system train hauls would beneeded.

Replacing fossil fuels with forest-based bioenergy has great environmen-tal benefits, which would be evengreater if the raw material were transpor-ted by rail.

CONTACT: Johanna Enström, Skogforsk+46-18-188502, johanna.enströ[email protected]

Making an inventory of the number ofspecies in the forest can be difficult andtime consuming. However, a joint studyby Skogforsk and SLU is now showingthat valuable sites can be identifiedthrough various types of dead wood anddead trees, which are easier to locatethan different beetles, lichens and mos-ses.

“Various types of dead tree – thick,

thin, recently-died, rotten, standing,lying, sunlit, shaded – provide favou-rable conditions for many species in allspecies groups,” says Line Djupström,who is leading the study. “Our studies in-dicate that inventories of biological di-versity can be made more efficient bylooking more at dead wood than at spe-cies, which often require more time andgreater expertise.”

DEAD WOODSHOWS LOCATION OF RARE SPECIES

SKOGFORSK RUNSGENDER EQUALITY SITE

Line Djupström manages the forestry sector's equality site onFacebook.

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ACES HIGHThe major initiative of the forestry and energy sectors – ESS(Efficient forest fuel Supply Systems) – costing SEK 65 millionover four years, has just come to an end. However ESS hasnow been extended, so SHORTCUTS asked programme ma-nager, Rolf Björheden, to read the cards.

Text and photo | sverker johansson | [email protected]

There’s more in the pot now. The priceof fuel is rising – does that also applyfor forest fuel?

The motivation for the price in-creases we’ve seen has been to givesufficient profitability for the playersconcerned. But I don’t think the pri-ces will continue to rise so sharply.What we’ll see instead is a muchmore specific assortment and fairerprices. It must be worthwhile tosupply what’s in demand – the rightenergy content, moisture contentand purity – and to ensure that thepotential of the raw material is utili-sed. Today there’s a lot missing.

What’s in the next hand?We’ll ride on the forestry sector’s oldhobby horse – rationalisations.There’s incredible potential here! Thecost of producing logging residuecould be reduced by nearly 30 per-cent through more efficient commi-nution techniques and forest androad transport. The cost of harves-ting small-dimension trees could bereduced by 15 percent with newtechnology for logging and foresttransport. The cost of stumps couldbe reduced by more than 30 percent

ESS means ace in Swedish – and the qua-lity of the ESS programme was also ratedvery highly in the follow-up conducted bythe Swedish Energy Agency.


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through coarse crushing, cheaper re-moval methods and improved logis-tics.

And when you read the cards? Whatdo you see five years from now?By then production of logging resi-due will have reduced costs by 15percent, i.e. half the potential willhave been realised. It’s a bit like tur-ning an oil tanker, there’s a vehiclefleet that takes time to replace, andpeople think they know it all. There’sa resistance to innovation.

For small-dimension trees, it’ll bemore difficult. Fuel extraction instands of very small-dimension treesis often carried out by part-time con-tractors who are not prepared to in-vest heavily in new technology. Manycontractors want the freedom toswitch to roundwood productionand aren’t interested in pure fueltechnology. But maybe this willchange – we’ve seen a number of spe-cialists becoming established in themarket.

If logging residue is an oil tanker,then stumps are a speedboat. Fewsystems and no preconceptions –here we can quickly change techno-logy and attitudes. Pretty much allthe improvements we know of todaycould be implemented within a five-year period.

Are there any players who are inve-sting more than others?In order to develop efficient supplychains we need pilots to grab thehelm and identify what is needed. Afew players have already started towork in a way that can lead to such aposition. It’s reasonable to believethat, in the future, profitability andrisk will be more closely related tothe investment. The clients will bemore specific with assortments andprices and I think it will lead to thefollowing developments.

Lead times will be shortened. Thetarget is “no fuel above 50 percent

’’humidity”, i.e. similar to that ofnewly-felled logs.

Tomorrow’s fuel will be purer thantoday’s, and this applies to both log-ging residue and stumps.

Fuel from small-dimension treeswill become an exclusively-felled as-sortment for boilers with high fuelrequirements and clients with a goodability to pay. Apart from this, moreof the fuel will be crushed – this ap-plies to stumps of course but also tologging residue.

Roundwood for energy, small di-mension trees and bundled materialwill be used more as strategic stocksto ensure delivery reliability and con-sistency in delivered fuel.

Because of these developments andthrough the requirement for more ef-ficient long-distance transports, ter-minals will become more importantin the supply chain.

Will there be any losers?The work environment worries me.Many risk factors are greater in bio-

fuel handling, such as dust, spores,noise and whole-body vibrations.The ergonomics in the forest machi-nes needs to be looked at, in thesame way as has been done for me-chanised forestry as a whole.

The environmental issues must begiven more attention. It’s not justabout reducing the negative effects offorest fuel extraction – this activitycan be used as a lever for improvingenvironmental protection and natureand forest conservation.

ESS is now entering a new round.Three ways to play the cards?There’ll be greater integration of fuelwith the main forestry operations –new machines will be developed thatdo more of the work in one process.We’ll also develop more efficient long-distance transport through collabora-tion with various modes of transport.And thirdly, I believe that informationtechnology will grow towards the usersand be utilised both for operative andstrategic optimisation of the fuel flows.

We’ll ride on the forestry sector’s old hobbyhorse – rationalisations. There’s incrediblepotential here!

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COST INDEX (TODAY = 100)

Stumps with potentialStumps offer the greatest potential for bigger and more cost-effective fuel volumes.The diagram shows that the cost of processing stumps can be reduced by 30 percentwithin five years.

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6 ShortCUTS | 2 | 2011 RESEARCH FOR TOMORROW’S FORESTRY

QUEST FOR

THE PERFECT HARVESTING UNIT

”My vision is a light andmanoeuvrable unit thatcontinually fells and ac-cumulates many smalltrees and also compres-ses the tree bundlewhen it’s placed on theground.” So says Skog-forsk’s Mia IwarssonWide – one of theworld’s leading expertson felling in stands ofsmall-dimension trees.

Text carl henrik palmérPhoto sverker johansson


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Mia Iwarsson Wide has workedwith forest fuel in the ESS pro-gramme for four years. Her maintask has been to develop technologyand methods for extracting small-di-mension trees in cleaning and thin-ning of untouched, 7-10-metre highforests with a lot of hardwood trees.

The forests are dense – an extrac-tion of 2,500-4,000 stems in a clea-ning/thinning programme is notunusual. However, the stems are thin– the majority are less than eight cen-timetres at breast height – so creatingviability in this type of felling is atough challenge.

But if we are to extract this rawmaterial for energy, we must attain azero result in cleaning/thinning. Be-cause if the landowner has to pay forfelling, it won’t happen – for the se-cond time.

“At some time in the past, thelandowner has ‘forgotten’ to cleanthese stands, often because theythought it would be too expensive. Itseems a bit naïve to believe that thelandowner would now suddenly bewilling to pay for the forest to be fel-led,” she says.

Mia Iwarsson Wide paints an opti-mistic picture of a system that wouldachieve a financial zero result. “It invol-ves a unit that fells the trees with a cir-cular saw – or possibly a heavy sawchain mounted on a circular saw bar.Shears are too slow and an ordinarychain saw blade can be too sensitive,”she says. “The unit is mounted on along crane, preferably eleven metres.This requires a stable base machine,like today’s thinning harvesters.”

Geometrically operating boom

The forest is cleaned geometrically inboom corridors, approximately one-metre wide, away from the striproad.All the trees in these corridors are fel-led in one continuous movement andgathered together in bundles. The

bundles are piled on the groundalong the crane corridor before for-warding.

“The operator works the boom inthe desired pattern” she says. “Theoperator doesn’t need to position theboom for every stem. That wouldtake too long and would be too ex-pensive.”

Between the corridors, the forest isleft untouched in 1-3-metre strips,and then a new corridor is cleared.The distance between the corridorsdepends on the number of stems.

“The unit must be light to ensurea high payload in each boom cycle,”she says. “There should be at least 15to 30 trees per boom cycle. The ma-chine should manage around 600trees per hour if the felling is to beviable. Preferably more, because eve-ryone likes a profit…”

Another big advantage is if the fo-rest fuel can be compressed at thetime of felling. This makes the for-warding much more efficient – withloose bundles there is far too muchair in the load.

Cross-cut saw on the unit“The simplest way is to pull the accu-mulated trees through the fellinghead using feeder rollers and thenplace the bundle on the ground –roughly the same way as today’s har-vester unit works but without delim-bing knives,” she explains.

“That’s enough to hold the limbstogether and form a more easily-handled bundle. Furthermore, manyneedles, leaves and small limbs drop

The arms that hold the bundle must be placedsufficiently high up – otherwise it will be liketrying to keep a bunch of flowers together byholding the bottoms of the stems.

onto the ground, improving the nut-rient status.”

“Perhaps there could also be across-cut saw on the unit to shortenthe bundle if it becomes too long anddifficult to handle.”

When will this become reality?“This isn’t a vision for some long-dis-tant future,” says Mia Iwarsson Wide.“There are already units on the mar-ket that have come a good way.”

“But multi-tree handling must beimproved – and that also applies innormal thinning. All equipment usedtoday is fitted onto existing units. Inthe future, multi-tree handling mustbe integrated from the start. Then wecan improve the efficiency of multi-tree handling and delimbing wouldbe improved.”

She gives a convincing example:the arms that hold the bundle mustbe placed sufficiently high up – ot-herwise it would be like trying tokeep a bunch of flowers together byholding the bottoms of the stems.Anyone can see it would just fallapart!

Most interesting development rightnow?Mia Iwarsson Wide has high hopesfor a student project at Luleå Univer-sity of Technology. A couple of stu-dents are building a prototype for“the perfect unit for stands withsmall-dimension trees”.

“They’ll be focusing on continu-ous felling and accumulation.”

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8REQUIREMENTS

FOR THE PERFECT UNIT

Continual andstable accumu-lation

Continual and fastfelling

Robust yet easy to handle

Adapted for geo-metrical harvestingpattern

Designed formulti-tree handling

Grip – and accu-mulating arms

Multi-tree feeding

Stable base machine with longand strong crane

RESEARCH PROGRAMMESWOOD UTILIZATION Lars [email protected]. Phone: +46 18 188555FOREST TECHNOLOGY Magnus [email protected]: +46 18 188596LOGISTICS Gert Andersson, [email protected] Phone: +46 18 188567

FOREST BIOENERGY Rolf Bjö[email protected]: +46 18 188509TREE BREEDING NORTHBengt Andersson [email protected]: +46 90 2033358TREE BREEDING SOUTH Bo [email protected]: +46 418 471305

SILVICULTURELars-Göran Sundblad [email protected]: +46 90 2033369ENVIRONMENT Jan-Olov Weslien [email protected]: +46 18 188505

UPPSALA (Head Office) Uppsala Science Park,SE-751 83 Uppsala, Sweden Phone: +46 18 188500

EKEBO Ekebo 2250, SE-268 90 Svalöv, SwedenPhone: +46 418 471300

UMEÅ P.O. Box 3, SE-918 21 Sävar, Sweden.Phone: +46 90 2033350

www.skogforsk.seEditor in chief: Jan Fryk | Form: Pagarango | Editor: Bitzer | ISSN: 2000-2726 | Photos: Sverker Johansson unless otherwise statedTranslated by: Leslie Walke, CommunicAID | Printed by: Gävle Offset, 2011

Jimmy Andersson at UpplandsFlis & Transport has three chip-per trucks and three containertrucks. He also hires in morecontainer trucks when neces-sary.

Most chip transports go toBrista Värmeverk outside Mär-sta. It is here that I meet Jimmyand join him in the cab for afew hours. After five years ofworking with chipper trucks,and producing more than a mil-lion cubic metres of woodchips, Jimmy Andersson doesn’thave the slightest doubt.

“A container-handling chip-

per truckcosts SEK 4.5million, and a

switch-bodytruck costs SEK

1.9 million. The fi-gures speak for them-

selves – theyshould be usedfor what theyare good at.”

When plan-ning hischipping

assignments, he can adapt thenumber of container trucksused depending on transportdistance. The aim is to mini-mise waiting times.

“We drove between Gästrik-land and Brista a while ago, a distance of 220 kilometres. I had five switch-body truckson the go. Today we’re chippingin Sigtuna, very close to Brista.We drive one container at atime, so we can both chip andtransport continuously.”

Containers the favoured option

Chipper trucks are becomingmore common, but Jimmy An-dersson believes there could beother solutions. Tractor-moun-ted chippers operate on smallstands and where the loggingresidues cannot be placed onthe roadside. But if he couldchoose between the switch-body system and normal chip-per trucks that both chip andtransport, he has no doubts.

“It has to be the switch-bodysystem. A normal chipper truckis more expensive – SEK 5.5million. And it also spends

much of the time on the road,so it’s really too expensive.”

Bright future

Lars Eliasson at Skogforsk atSkogforsk analysed the contai-ner handling chipper truck sys-tem – and likes what he’s seen.and likes what he’s seen. It isone of the most profitable com-bination from a distance as

short as 20-30 kilometres, buthe believes that there are otherreasons for choosing traditionalchipper trucks.

“For small biomass landingsclose to the customer, a traditio-nal chipper truck is a goodchoice. But a chipper costingSEK 2.5 million shouldn’t bedriven around unnecessarily. It should be chipping.”

READ MORE:Resultat 19/2010CONTACT: Lars Eliasson, 018-188525, [email protected]

RESULTS FROM SKOGFORSKThe container-handling chipper truck (CCT) can be utilised moreefficiently than a traditional chipper truck because the containertrucks take care of the transport. Compared with chippers moun-ted on forwarders or tractor-pulled chippers, the CCT is cheaper to move and logistics are simplified.

”CHIPPERS SHOULD CHIP

–TRUCKS SHOULD ROLL”

Text and photo | sverker johansson | [email protected]

He’s done the sums. With investments of over SEK 20 million, Jimmy Andersson wants to optimise utilisation:

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ShortCUTS No. 2, 2011

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