Damage to natural production forests due to timber harvesting

Abstract

Timber harvesting of natural production forests causes damage in the form of gaps in the forest area around it. The area gaps will hurt the sustainability of timber production from natural forests. This paper presents the treefall gaps due to timber harvesting in the Papua Forest. We also developed multiple regressions to analyse the effect of tree diameter and height and the area gaps created. The results showed that: 1) tree diameter and height ranged between 51.29-60.11 cm and 15.39-17.17 m respectively; 2) the average gap area was 13.84% (143.26 m2) for every one felled tree; 3) tree diameter and height have no significant effect on forest gap area due to felling; 4) the average of forest gaps area created from timber skidding was 3249.61 m2 (18.55%); and 5) tree diameter and the number of skidded timbers not significantly affect the area gaps due to timber skidding.