Ho-Seong Mun

Korea Forest Research Institute | KFRI · research center

Recently, the use of powerful and heavy vehicles for timber harvesting on flat or slightly sloping terrains has been widely expanded to provide safe working conditions and high productivity. However, soil disturbances during ground-based mechanized operations in South Korea are not fully investigated and difficult to avoid. Therefore, we compared t...

Thinning is a silvicultural process in which trees are both harvested selectively and systematically removed from a stand to enhance forest management and ecosystem dynamics. However, this practice is challenged by the mechanical damage to residual trees, and the nature of this damage, particularly on stand damage during mechanized row-thinning and...

This study was conducted to compare the productivity and cost of harvesting and processing system between manual and mechanized methods in short-rotation coppice (SRC). The wood chips were divided into class based on their characteristics. There was also a consideration whether the fuel conditions of the energy facilities were suitable. The cost of...

Chainsaw use for motor-manual timber harvesting in South Korea is associated with worker safety issues. However, forestry operations such as timber harvesting have already been mechanized to reduce hazards to workers and increase productivity. This study analyzed the productivities and costs of felling and processing, felling and processing using a...

Considerable amounts of noncommercial materials generated from thinning treatments remain unattended on the site because the value of small-sized timber is lower than overall thinning operation costs in South Korea. In addition, thinning operations with conventional and mechanized harvesting systems often cause severe physical damage to residual tr...

The use of renewable energy has increased markedly with growing global efforts to reduce fossil carbon emissions. Among various renewable energy sources, forest residues produced from timber harvesting are considered effective energy production sources. The combustion effectiveness of forest residues is highly affected by their quality, particularl...

This study calculated the productivity and cost of extraction and processing of logging residues by cut-to-length (CTL) and whole-tree (WT) harvesting methods. In addition, the comparative analysis of the characteristics of wood chip fuel to examine whether it was suitable for the fuel conditions of the energy facility. In the harvesting and proces...

PurposeTo develop a teleoperation system for forest harvesters using images from the work area.Methods In a CPE (customer premises equipment) environment, both the control command to operate a forest harvester and images to monitor the work area are transmitted using 5.8 GHz Wi-Fi. The control command is sent to the harvester by wirelessly connecti...

In a cable yarding system, a small-scale tower yarder attached to a farm tractor wasdeveloped and used for small-diameter tree harvesting operations. Based on this design, improvement of traction performance was required for medium-and large-diameter tree harvesting operations. In this study, the mechanical transmission employed for the tower yarde...

Forest biomass has recently been highlighted as a renewable energy source in South Korea. As the Renewable Energy Certificate weight has been revised to encourage the use of forest biomass for energy production, forest operations have focused on the development of new technologies and harvesting methods for the extraction and utilization of forest...

Interest in the production of renewable energy using forest biomass is increasing in South Korea, and improved knowledge on operations logistics to lower biomass harvesting costs is needed. This study aimed to build a low-cost forest-biomass harvesting system by analyzing the costs of two integrated (cut-to-length and whole-tree) harvesting systems...

This study was conducted in clear cutting stands. For the whole-tree yarding operation, a tower-yarder based on excavator with a radio-controlled double clamp carriage was applied to analyze yarding productivity and cost. The productivity and cost of yarding operation was 6.2 ㎥/SMH(machine utilization rate, 80.4%) and 13,705 won/㎥, respectively. Al...

Chipping productivity, cost and product quality of logging residue by extraction methods

The purpose of this study was to broaden our knowledge on the productivity and costs of felling operation in three different harvesting methods(whole tree, tree-length and cut-to-length). Felling was conducted in three different harvesting methods with two workers who have different work experiences. Worker A and B have had felling experiences for...

This study was analyzed the operational cost of logging and chipping operations in order to develop the efficient logging operation system for the utilization of forest-biomass. Analysis of the operational cost of logging operation systems, the operation system D which include chain saw, tower-yarder, mini-forwarder and truck was calculated the low...