The purpose of the study was to develop a computer program to perform theoretical performance analysis of Japanese mobile tower yarders in order to estimate the production if this machine were operated in a Thai teak plantation. The result was a computer program written in Visual Basic language. Stand characteristics and terrain conditions of Thai Teak plantation were used as parameters and presented in an on-screen visual digital terrain map to provide elevation data for the analysis of cable payload, positions of tower and spar, and locations of forest roads. The program conducted a profile analysis of the cable line by extracting the profile from the on-screen contour map and displaying it on the computer screen. On each extracted profile screen, cable analysis was conducted based on all appropriate collected data and parameters in both Thailand and Japan together with the performance rating of the tested machine. The payload capacity and cycle time of all cable lines were then computed. A summa of all computed results for all cable lines that have been planned for the area are then presented in terms of productivity.

View full abstract

Mutual connections in the rural community must be dense so as to secure a sufficient amount of forestry work in the community. Road networks have a large effect to level up these mutual connections in the community and shorten the transfer time inside the rural community. I discuss the function of the primary roads in "forest area" by evaluating approximate access time to move around the forest area. In this evaluation, the "accessibility" is calculated from the value of gross area divided by the time required to move on the primary road from end to end. Through this value, we can estimate the effect of the load considering the complication of the geomorphic environment, the forest road standard, and so on. In addition, accessibility can serve a mean for the evaluation and mutual comparison of new road plans.

View full abstract

Forest road constructions sometimes damage the natural environment in the forest. For the forest road coexists and harmonizes with the natural environment, it is important that damaged areas make smaller. The purpose of this paper is to estimate scales and conditions of damaged forest areas with the forest road construction. We investigated 50 forest roads (285 places) and each forest road ledger, and analyzed these data by the simple tabulation and the quantification theory of the first type. As a result of this analysis, when the road width is large, the width of damaged forest area tends to be wide. However, the retaining wall and the masonry have effect on making the small damaged forest area. Moreover, the maximum damaged forest area must estimate about 3.5 times as large as the road width.

View full abstract

In this report, we tried to plan thinning methods for the forests that need thinning, using a technique of GIS. A using application soft is TNTmips. The forest is artificial forest of Japanese cedars and cypress of 35 years old, 35 ha at Daigo in Ibaragi Prefecture and planted by Forest Development Corporation. Data was made for planning areas, forest road routes, and planted tree species from management planning maps. DTM was made by inputting from a scanner of contour lines in the terrain map. Data of the above are made by GIS. A road net plan was performed for thinning with a mini-forwarder and a tower-yarder.

View full abstract

We analyzed comfortable feelings of 40 objects to 9 photographs of forest landscape from forest road by Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process Method and the fixation of eye movements of 10 objects to video images of the same photographs by eye camera. As the results, they feel more comfortable in the forest with richness in color and form variety by Fuzzy AHP Method, and the most concentration of eye movement fixed the boundary of texture, the part of bright color, and the part of recess and edge. Thus, it found that they would feel the most comfortable in the forest landscape with the greater part of bright color and the clear boundary of texture.

View full abstract