The optimization of skid trails network for extracting of industrial wood based forest products by farm tractors in forestry

Transporting wood based forest products from temporarily landing areas through skid trails is one of the logging methods in forestry. Logging operation by using tractors takes place on skid trails. Currently, there are no technical regulations indicating principles for planning of skid trail considering entire harvesting unit. This current status may lead to cause time and economical losses and environmental impacts in many places of forested areas.The objective of this study is investigating technical, economical, and environmental aspects of skidding industrial wood based products by farm tractors on skid trails and optimizing skid trails network by developing new skidding model which minimizes negative effects.The harvesting units with the ground slope of 0-33% were selected as study area located in Balıklı Forest Enterprise Chief, Gölyaka Forest Enterprise Directorate. In this study; term of skid trail was evaluated, logging with farm tractor was investigated, skidding model was generated considering technical, economical, and environmental aspects, and skid trails network were optimized. In optimization of the model, Linear Programming (LP) method was used and spatial database was generated by GIS.At the end of this study, step wise improvement and enhancement strategy was implemented in the model by considering technical, economical, and environmental aspects and then skid trails network were optimized. It was found that optimum skid trail model increased productivity of farm tractor logging by 16.84% and 0.10$ saving was reached in skidding of 1 m3 log on 100 m long skid trail, comparing with current methods. By the means of skid trail optimization approach in the field of forest harvesting, number of environmental impacts were avoided such as soil compaction of 236 m2 per hectare, soil loss of 17.86 m3 per hectare, and residual damages on 2124 saplings per hectare.Extraction of industrial wood based forest products with minimum time, economical, and environmental losses can be ensured by implementing skid trails network optimization approach.