A Literature Review Related to the Modern Harvesting - Forwarding Equipment and the Main Topics Concern of the Research Community

Abstract

A literature review on harvester and forwarder equipment was conducted using the open access international scientific databases. The aims of this study were to evaluate the main interests of different research topics elaborated in 28 countries around the world in the last 23 years. The time span of the main articles ranged from the beginning of the year 1990 to end of 2012. The evolution trend of research topics was analyzed for this time period in order to relate them to possible future research directions in Romania. Most of the used literature was extracted mainly from scientific journals and conference proceedings, summing up a total of 105 references that were further analyzed. As expected, the synthesis of the references, pointed out that most of the interests and attention of the scientists has been given to productivity, costs and time expenditure on one hand, followed by studies on soil impact, environment and tree damage on the other hand. Topics referring to fuel-lubricants consumption and computer simulations didn't had the same impact among the researched literature, accounting for the smallest number of the cited articles. The obtained results will fill in the gap in future research by using scientific approaches particular to the Romanian conditions.