Epsilon Open Archive

<p>During recent decades, a relatively large part of the open landscape in Sweden has become overgrown with brushwood. For example, brushwood is spreading on abandoned agricultural land, abandoned semi-natural grasslands, on ancient cultural land and in marginal land in urban areas. There is also growth of brushwood along roads and railway lines and in power line corridors, which needs to be managed. The standing and annual available quantities of brushwood in Sweden has been estimated to 309 PJ and 23 PJ, respectively (excl. brushwood established on forest land). At present, however, the use of this biomass resource is negligible.<br>In real situations, there is often lack of detailed data on stands and harvest costs. Thus, it may be difficult to know in advance if it is profitable or not to harvest a specific stand. The aim of this project was to produce a decision support to assess costs and revenues. Simulations were used to investigate the costs under a wide range of harvest conditions regarding e.g. area and shape of stands, composition of tree species, stem density and breast height diameter.<br>The project comprised three main parts: i) development of a brushwood stand generator, ii) development of a dynamic simulation model to simulate harvest and handling operations, iii) development of a model to calcaulate costs and profitability. Literature review provided data for generation of brushwood stands and for simulations (e.g. machine time consumption).</p>