Effects of wheeled cable skidder on rut formation in skid trail — a case study in Hyrcanian forest

Abstract

The impact of skidding operations on forest soils can be divided into three major categories: soil profile disturbance, soil compaction, and soil puddling and rutting. The present study was designed as a factorial experiment in the Kheyrud Forest with a Timberjack cable skidder to evaluate the influences of number of machine passes and soil moisture of skid trails on rutting over a fine-grained soil, and to quantify these effects. The effects of soil moisture of 20%–30%, 30%–40% and 40%–50% and different levels of compaction were studied. Compaction treatments were applied using different numbers of skidding passes (1, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 times). Result shows that an increase in the number of machine passes could increase rut depth, but the majority of rutting was occurred after the initial few machine passes. Also rut depth at soil moisture of 40%–50% was higher than rut depths at soil moisture of 30%–40% and 20%–30%. The average rut depth in soil with 20%–30%, 30%–40% and 40%–50% moisture was 17, 22 and 35 cm, respectively. Rut depths were increased significantly with soil moisture and number of machine passes. It is suggested that skidding operations should be planned when soil conditions are dry in order to minimize rutting., but if skidding must be done under wet conditions, the operations should be stopped when machine traffic could create deep ruts.

Keywords

wheeled cable skidder / rut formation / disturbance / soil moisture / number of passes

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