Health and Safety Issues and Perceptions of Forest Harvesting Contractors in Ireland

The aim of this study was to examine the extent and severity of accidents and long-term health problems, and to evaluate perceptions of health and safety issues among forest harvesting contractors and sub-contractors in Ireland. A postal questionnaire was distributed to 450 forest harvesting (sub)contractors with the co-operation of the Irish Forestry Contractors Association (IFCA) and Coillte Teoranta (the State Forestry Company, referred to as Coillte). The questionnaire was completed and returned by 61 respondents. The majority of these were chainsaw, harvester and forwarder operators. The occurrence of an accident (requiring medical attention) in the last three years was reported by two respondents, while long-term health problems were reported by 23 (40%) of the respondents. Results showed that long-term health problems were not significantly correlated to age or training level. The two work elements in forest harvesting operations that were found to be most hazardous were operating a chainsaw and machine maintenance. When asked about the perceived dangers in the industry and the obstacles to improvements, 59% of the respondents identified harvesting work as dangerous, while 62% described financial pressure as the main barrier to improvements in safety, followed by the pressure of work (39%) and a lack of adequate training (36%). Suggestions on ways to improve the overall health and safety situation within forest harvesting included improved training and safety education (45%) and reduced work pressure (36%)

The Evaluation of a National Forest Harvest Scheduling System for Ireland - Two Case Studies

Coillte Teoranta (the Irish Forestry Board) harvested approximately 2.0 million m3 in 1994. By the year 2000 this annual harvest is projected to increase to approximately 2.8 million m3 and to 3.7 million m3 by the year 2011. To facilitate the management of these increased timber flows more efficiently and effectively, the Harvest Scheduling System (HSS) was developed. In order to evaluate the HSS's solutions, five case studies were carried out, two of which are presented in this paper. Initially, the HSS model was solved without any management constraints, resulting in a theoretical maximum net present value (NPV) (case study 1). Subsequently, the effect of imposing national and regional level volume fluctuation constraints was examined (case study 2). The investigations in the "no constraints" study resulted in a theoretical optimal harvest schedule for Coillte over the period 1998 to 2002. The solution showed great volume fluctuations from year to year, in terms of total volume, species, harvest type and product. It would be impossible to implement such a schedule, due to management, harvesting resources and industry requirements. However, the NPV achieved was used as a base to estimate the cost of applying management constraints in the second case study. This second study also showed that Coillte's production smoothing process results in harvest schedules that are not feasible, as no adjustments for volume are included

The Effect of Calibration on the Accuracy of Harvester Measurements

Almost all timber in Ireland is harvested using mechanical harvesting heads. All new harvesters come equipped with computerized measurement systems. The objective of the research reported in this article was to assess the impact of calibration on the accuracy of harvester head measurement systems in Irish forestry conditions. The research was carried out on a site in Co. Cork. The harvester was a Timberjack 1270D with a 762C harvester head and the Timbermatic 300 control and measurement system. The harvester measurement system was assessed on its accuracy in measuring the length and volume of individual stems and logs in 9 check runs of 7 or 8 stems. The harvester head measurements were compared to values obtained by caliper-and-tape measurements. The main point that can be taken from this research is that regular calibration will greatly improve the accuracy of the harvester measurement system. After calibration, length measurement by the harvester measurement system of individual logs was very accurate, while volume measurement was unsatisfactory for the pulp log assortment. The differences between the harvester measurements and the caliper-and-tape measurements fluctuated greatly, varying from positive to negative differences within a check run, even after calibration. These fluctuations could indicate an inherent problem associated with the design of the calibration procedure, as the positive and negative differences cancel each other out and the calibration, based on mean values, appears to indicate accurate measurements. More work needs to be done on reducing to impact of the roughness and branchiness of smaller dimension logs on the accuracy of diameter and length measurements in Irish conditions

An Evaluation and Comparison of Mechanised and Manual Tree Planting on Afforestation and Reforestation Sites in Ireland

Recent labour shortages and rapid increases in labour costs in Irish forestry have directed attention to mechanised, containerised tree planting systems as an alternative to the traditional manual planting of bare-rooted stock. The objective of this study was to compare mechanised planting with manual operations, on both reforestation and afforestation sites, using Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis (Bong.) Carr.) plants in three container types (i.e. hard container, root trainer, fen container). The Bräcke tree planting machine was selected for the study, as it is capable of handling a wide range of site conditions and a variety of plant types and sizes. A qualitative analysis of the collected data showed that, in general, manual planting scored significantly higher than mechanised planting for plant position and planting quality. However, the quality of planting resulting from mechanised operations was well within acceptable operational requirements. On the reforestation site, plant growth after one growing season was investigated. No overall significant differences in height growth and root collar diameter increment were found in the first growing season between mechanised and manual planting operations. Plants grown in `fen containers' had the highest relative increase in height growth and root collar diameter, irrespective of planting method. The results showed that the Bräcke planting machine was capable of planting a range of containerised plants to an acceptable standard on both reforestation and afforestation sites. Further research to optimise the combination of machine, plant size and container type should result in improvements in both the quality and productivity of the planting operations

Transparent Dynamic reconfiguration for CORBA

Distributed systems with high availability requirements have to support some form of dynamic reconfiguration. This means that they must provide the ability to be maintained or upgraded without being taken off-line. Building a distributed system that allows dynamic reconfiguration is very intrusive to the overall design of the system, and generally requires special skills from both the client and server side application developers. There is an opportunity to provide support for dynamic reconfiguration at the object middleware level of distributed systems, and create a dynamic reconfiguration transparency to application developers. We propose a Dynamic Reconfiguration Service for CORBA that allows the reconfiguration of a running system with maximum transparency for both client and server side developers. We describe the architecture, a prototype implementation, and some preliminary test result

Optimum Spur Road Layout Near A Forest Boundary Line

A simple method to determine optimum spur road length and spacing in the vicinity of a forest boundary line is presented. Sample problems are solved to illustrate the method

Damage to Natural Regeneration in the Hyrcanian Forests of Iran: A Comparison of Two Typical Timber Extraction Operations

This study investigated the impact of two different timber extraction systems on the natural regeneration in two compartments in the Hyrcanian Forests in northern Iran. These forests consist of mixed uneven-aged stands which are managed under the single tree selection system, with timber extraction taking place by cable system or by skidder. The operations were carried out by standard crews in 2 compartments with very similar terrain and stand conditions. The amount of damage to all stages of the regeneration was significantly higher in the skidding operation than in the cable operation. Based on this preliminary result and on observations of the authors, recommendations for future research and for improved harvest practices were drawn up

Investigating the impact of varying levels of inventory data detail on private sector harvest forecasting

peer-reviewedA comparison was made between four methods of generating roundwood production forecasts for private sector forests in Ireland which used varying levels of inventory data as inputs into the production Model. Two methods were based on stand variables: the Irish Dynamic Yield Model (IDYM) method and the General Yield Class (GYC) method. The other two methods were based on site variables used to derive predictions of productivity from climate and map-based data and include a local prediction (LPYC) and a national prediction of yield class (NPYC), the latter the same as that used in the All Ireland Roundwood Production Forecast 2016-2035 (Phillips et al. 2016). To determine the reliability of predictions for an individual stand, field measurements of yield class (GYC) were compared with the predictions of yield class derived using the NPYC and LPYC methods for 52 privately-owned stands of Sitka spruce in the north-west of Ireland. The prediction of yield class using the NPYC method had a low probability of agreement with GYC, with a large bias to under-predict yield class. The LPYC method had a higher probability of agreement and lower bias indicating a better assessment of local productivity. To assess the impact of the various productivity estimates on roundwood production forecasts, separate roundwood forecasts for the period 2016- 2035 were generated. The forecast produced using the NPYC method was used as a baseline for comparison purposes. As expected, the under-prediction of yield class using the NPYC method produced the lowest volume production estimate (318,454 m3) for the forecast period. Both the GYC and LPYC methods resulted in a significant increase in estimated volume production of between 25% and 29% over the baseline. The IDYM method provided the highest estimate of volume production (432,000 m3) for the forecast period, an increase of 35% over the baseline. The increased output predicted using the IDYM method is explained by the inclusion of stocking and basal area data, which more accurately reflected the increased growing stock of private forests than yield data derived using Forestry Commission yield models based on prescribed management. The increases in productivity associated with the use of LPYC, GYC and IDYM methods had the effect of producing shorter rotations and resulted in an increase in the area clearfelled and associated volume production. Perhaps more importantly, the timing of volume production was affected by using more accurate methods to assess productivity (i.e. LPYC, GYC, IDYM), owing to a higher yield-age profile of stands compared to those assessed using the NPYC predictions. The findings point to a possible under-estimation of the productivity for private stands in the All Ireland Roundwood Production Forecast and have implications for the timing of the forecasted volume which could be brought forward by 5 to 6 years. In the absence of field or aerial laser measurement of height and age, the use of the LPYC method is recommended for future private sector roundwood producion forecasts

Neighbourhood immigrant concentration effects on migrant and native youth’s educational commitments, an enquiry into personality differences

Part of the research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007–2013) / ERC Grant Agreement n. 615159 (ERC Consolidator Grant DEPRIVEDHOODS, Socio-spatial inequality, deprived neighbourhoods, and neighbourhood effects) and from the Marie Curie programme under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007–2013) / Career Integration Grant n. PCIG10-GA-2011-303728 (CIG Grant NBHCHOICE, Neighbourhood choice, neighbourhood sorting, and neighbourhood effects).In the literature examining neighbourhood effects on educational outcomes, the socialisation mechanism is usually investigated by looking at the association between neighbourhood characteristics and educational attainment. The step in between, that adolescents actually internalise educational norms held by residents, is often assumed. We attempt to fill this gap by looking at how the internalisation of educational norms (commitments) is influenced by neighbourhoods’ immigrant concentration. We investigate this process for both migrant and native youth, as both groups might be influenced differently by immigrant concentrations. To test our hypothesis we used longitudinal panel data with five waves (N = 4255), combined with between-within models which control for a large portion of potential selection bias. These models have an advantage over naïve OLS models in that they predict the effect of change in neighbourhood characteristics on change in educational commitment, and therefore offer a more dynamic approach to modelling neighbourhood effects. Our results show that living in neighbourhoods with higher proportions of immigrants increases the educational commitments of migrant youth compared to living in neighbourhoods with lower proportions. Besides, we find that adolescents with a resilient personality experience less influence of the neighbourhood context on educational commitments than do adolescents with non-resilient personalities.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Neighbourhood deprivation and the Big Five personality traits : associations with adolescent problem behaviour and educational attainment

Funding: The UK Medical Research Council and Wellcome (Grant ref: 102215/2/13/2) and the University of Bristol provide core support for ALSPAC. A comprehensive list of grants funding is available on the ALSPAC website. This research was specifically funded by the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013) / ERC Grant Agreement n. 615159 (ERC Consolidator Grant DEPRIVEDHOODS, Socio-spatial inequality, deprived neighbourhoods, and neighbourhood effects).We studied the relation between cumulative exposure to neighbourhood deprivation and adolescents’ Big Five personality traits, and the moderating role of personality in the relation between neighbourhood deprivation and the development of problem behaviour and educational attainment. We studied 5365 British adolescents from ages 10 to 16, with neighbourhood information from birth onwards. Extraversion, agreeableness, emotional stability, and openness to experience moderated the relation between deprivation and problem behaviour. For educational attainment, only extraversion was a moderator. This means that higher values on personality traits were related to weaker relations between neighbourhood deprivation and problem behaviour and educational attainment. The results showed the importance of taking into account adolescents’ personality when assessing developmental outcomes in relation to neighbourhood deprivation.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe