Exoskeletons have been recognized as an effective ergonomic control to reduce physical risk factors, including forceful exertions and awkward postures that are common in manual timber felling. However, no evidence exists to date that offers industry perspectives, important facilitators, and potential barriers for adopting exoskeletons in the forest industry. Therefore,...
Operational studies are necessary to support production and management decisions of forest industries. A time study (TS) approach is widely used in timber harvesting operations to understand the performance of individual harvesting machines as well as the entire system. However, several limitations of the TS approach include the use of...
Two ground-based timber harvesting methods have been commonly used for beetle-kill salvage treatments after a bark beetle epidemic in northern Colorado. A lop and scatter method uses a mobilized stroke delimber to delimb and buck trees at the stump, leaving tree tops and limbs on the forest floor, while a...
Designing timber harvesting units is a challenging task. The task requires decision making on logging equipment, landing site, cable road profile, road location, and transportation system. Traditionally forest planners have done the task manually. However, the manual method makes it difficult to examine many alternatives and the harvest plans depend...
Designing timber harvesting units is a challenging task. The task requires decision making on logging equipment, landing site, cable road profile, road location, and transportation system. Traditionally forest planners have done the task manually. However, the manual method makes it difficult to examine many alternatives and the harvest plans depend...
Growing demand for bioenergy, biofuels, and bioproducts has increased interests in the utilization of biomass residues from forest treatments as feedstock. In areas with limited history of industrial biomass utilization, uncertainties in the quantity, distribution, and cost of biomass production and logistics can hinder the development of new bio-based industries....
Primary wood products manufacturers generate significant amounts of woody biomass residues that can be used as feedstocks for distributed-scale thermochemical conversion systems that produce valuable bioenergy and bioproducts. However, private investment in these technologies is driven primarily by financial performance, which is often unknown for new technologies with limited industrial...
Planning and implementation of road BMPs on a watershed scale can be a difficult task because of the need to prioritize locations while accounting for multiple constraints, such as the available budget, continuous maintenance, and equipment scheduling. Using simulated annealing (SA) as its heuristic optimizer, BMP-SA accounts for sediment being...
Designing timber harvesting units is a challenging task. The task requires decision making on logging equipment, landing site, cable road profile, road location, and transportation system. Traditionally forest planners have done the task manually. However, the manual method makes it difficult to examine many alternatives and the harvest plans depend...