“Productivity in small tree thinning operations”

On Monday, 7th of December 29, 2020, partners of SMALLWOOD project organized an international web conference entitled ” Productivity in small tree thinning operations”. The purpose of the conference was to:

  • present the preliminary results of SMALLWOOD project,
  • present field studies done in Sweden, Finland, Slovenia and Spain
  • present an innovative boom tip mounted felling head in different types of thinning and two working methods
  • present preliminary results of productivity studies done in the small diameter stands
  • present preliminary results about damages on the remaining stand.

We invited researchers, forest professionals, forest operators, and other forest sector experts from all SMALLWOOD partners countries and beyond to the conference.

After the introduction to the conference, which was given by the Nike Krajnc from Slovenian Forestry Institute, prof. Tomas Nordfjell, leader of the Smallwood project, presented the project.

On all the trials in Sweden, Finland and Slovenia, an upgraded C16c felling head was used. Trials in Sweden were presented by Tomas Nordfjell from SLU, trials in Finland by Yrjö Nuutinen from LUKE and for trials in Slovenia by Matevž Triplat from GIS. After that Raul Fernandez Lacruz from SLU presented preliminary results from all presented trials.

Eduardo Tolosana from UPM presented preliminary results from Spanish trails, which were affected by the COVID-19 situation and performed trials with Retrabio and Biobaler technology. Teresa Fuente from UPM presented the preliminary results of environmental aspects focusing on damages on the remaining stands in Sweden, Finland and Slovenia.

The conference was successful, we had 68 participants from 13 countries (Figure 1). Most participants were from Slovenia, Sweden and Finland, followed by Spain, Ireland, Estonia, Croatia, Italy, Norway, Portugal, France, Bosnia and Herzegovina and also Russia.

Figure 1 Countries from which the conference participants were

Mainly the conference attendees were representatives of educational and research institutions, training centers and schools, forestry companies, forest service (Figure 2).

Figure 2 Target groups from which the conference participants were

We are pleased that we achieved the desired effect with the conference, as the participants were very satisfied with the content itself, as well as the implementation of the event (Figure 3).

Figure 3 Opinions of conference participants

The conference was also broadcast live on the Facebook page of the Department of Forestry Technology and Economics of the Forestry Institute of Slovenia (www.facebook.com/gisgte). Our post reached almost 500 people with live streaming.

Between the conference we had several poll questions, here are the most interesting ones.

Recording of the conference, PPT presentations

A recording of the conference is available here.