Stem recovery and harvesting productivity of two different harvesting systems in final felling of Pinus patula

With the current demand of wood products and industrial requirements, plantation owners need to re-think ways in which harvesting is carried out and identify the most efficient harvesting system that also utilizes small diameter parts of stem per industry's product specifications. This paper contributes to the discussion by comparing the harvesting productivity and stem recovery between conventional harvesting (CH) and integrated harvesting (IH) systems. CH is harvesting which does not necessarily align with the log dimensional requirements of the customer and only recovers logs with big diameters while IH is based on harvesting and sorting logs according to need in a single operation so that as much volume and value as possible of the stands is realized. The study was carried out at the Sao Hill Forest Plantation in the Southern Highlands of Tanzania. The harvested compartment was purposively selected and divided into IH and CH plots. A total of 39 trees were randomly selected to be harvested from each plot. The findings portray a significant difference in the stem recovery of 75% for IH and 60% for CH. CH had an average cutting productivity of 16 m3/h as compared to 14 m3/h for IH while skidding productivity was 15.3 m3/h and 24.9 m3/h for IH and CH, respectively. In this study, the IH system resulted in higher production in terms of volume recovered, meaning IH had a significant impact on the production and stem recovery of the standard stem-wood for use in different industries.