The effective implementation of sustainable forest management depends largely on carrying out forest operations in a sustainable manner. Climate change, as well as the increasing demand for forest products, requires a re-thinking of forest operations in terms of sustainability. In this context, it is important to understand the major driving factors for the future development of forest operations that promote economic, environmental and social well-being. The main objective of this paper is to identify important issues concerning forest operations and to propose a new paradigm towards sustainability in a changing climate, work and environmental conditions. Previously developed concepts of forest operations are reviewed, and a newly developed concept - Sustainable Forest Operations (SFO), is presented. Five key performance areas to ensure the sustainability of forest operations include: (i) environment; (ii) ergonomics; (iii) economics; (iv) quality optimization of products and production; and (v) people and society. Practical field examples are presented to demonstrate how these five interconnected principles are relevant to achieving sustainability, namely profit and wood quality maximization, ecological benefits, climate change mitigation, carbon sequestration, and forest workers' health and safety. The new concept of SFO provides integrated perspectives and approaches to effectively address ongoing and foreseeable challenges the global forest communities face, while balancing forest operations performance across economic, environmental and social sustainability. In this new concept, we emphasize the role of wood as a renewable and environmentally friendly material, and forest workers' safety and utilization efficiency and waste management as additional key elements of sustainability.

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Effects of the number of assortments and log concentration on time consumption for forwardingManner J., Nordfjell T., Lindroos O. (2013). Effects of the number of assortments and log concentration on time consumption for forwarding. Silva Fennica vol. 47 no. 4 article id 1030. 19 p. Highlights• We analysed the effects of total and forwarded log concentrations (m 3 (100 m) -1 ) and the number of loaded assortments on forwarding.• The combination of the number of loaded assortments and their abundance (i.e. forwarded log concentration) affected time consumption most. • This knowledge enables improved efficiency by optimizing number and assortment proportions in the various loads required to forward a stand. AbstractForwarding has been carried out for 50 years, but much is still unknown about this work. Its complexity comes from both stand features and essential decision-making. Forwarding time consumption is influenced by e.g. log concentrations and number of assortments. Traditionally, focus has been on the total log concentration (TLC), referring to all logs at the harvesting site. However, we focused on forwarded log concentration (FLC), the load-specific log concentration which depends on the assortment distribution at harvesting site and the load-specific number of assortments. To evaluate the effects of TLC, number of assortments in a load and FLC on the loading and unloading times, a standardized field experiment was carried out. Pile and load sizes were constant, while TLC and FLC were manipulated by varying the pile distribution on the test path. For all work elements, the time consumption per m 3 was significantly affected by the number of assortments that were loaded, but only the "driving while loading" work element was also significantly influenced by TLC. However, when untangling the intercorrelation between tested factors, it was found that the time consumption for driving while loading significantly decreased as a function of FLC and was unaffected by the number of assortments in a load. That FLC influences the forwarding time consumption highlights the need to study the effects of combining various assortment proportions in a load. Such knowledge will enable analysis of the most efficient number and assortment proportions to combine in the various loads required to forward a given stand.

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Highlights• Recent developments in on-board technology enables automatic collection of follow-up data on forwarder work.• Time consumption per load was more strongly associated with Loading drive distance than with extraction distance, indicating that the relevance of extraction distance as a main indicator of forwarding productivity should be re-considered.• Data, within variables, were positively skewed with a few exceptions with normal distributions. AbstractRecent developments in on-board technology have enabled automatic collection of follow-up data on forwarder work. The objective of this study was to exploit this possibility to obtain highly representative information on time consumption of specific work elements (including overlapping crane work and driving), with one load as unit of observation, for large forwarders in final felling operations. The data used were collected by the John Deere TimberLink system as nine operators forwarded 8868 loads, in total, at sites in mid-Sweden. Load-sizes were not available. For the average and median extraction distances (219 and 174 m, respectively), Loading, Unloading, Driving empty, Driving loaded and Other time effective work (PM) accounted for ca. 45, 19, 8.5, 7.5 and 14% of total forwarding time consumption, respectively. The average and median total time consumptions were 45.8 and 42.1 minutes/load, respectively. The developed models explained large proportions of the variation of time consumption for the work elements Driving empty and Driving loaded, but minor proportions for the work elements Loading and Unloading. Based on the means, the crane was used during 74.8% of Loading PM time, the driving speed was nonzero during 31.9% of the Loading PM time, and Simultaneous crane work and driving occurred during 6.7% of the Loading PM time. Time consumption per load was more strongly associated with Loading drive distance than with extraction distance, indicating that the relevance of extraction distance as a main indicator of forwarding productivity should be re-considered.