Necessity of using aerostats and balloons for logging

Presently Russia’s timber industry, particularly in its Far Eastern region and Siberia, is faced with a number of problems connected to the following factors:

· Timber felling site remoteness from populated areas causes supplementary expenditures for building and maintenancing wood-roads and bridges. It also influences hauling unit deterioration and log removal productivity, so the net cost of the wood is high.

· The main resources of high-grade timber are located in regions difficult to access or in prohibited areas where conventional mechanisms cannot be used for logging.

· The big problem is that in Summer, Spring, and Autumn periods volumes of forest harvesting operations are reduced because some wood-cutting areas become inaccessible for land transport.

· Environmental deterioration is another problem. Clean wood dragging and machinery movement on the slope can lead to excessive damage to the top-soil, and cause an additional expenditures for soil control and forest recreation. These expenditures may become very sizable since the mountain environment is particularly sensitive. Besides, about 80% of streams spring from woodland, and being damaged and polluted may become dried up and influence another global ecological problems.

In the Far Eastern region of Russia, specifically in the Khabarovsk territory, old machines, chiefly caterpillar TT-4, are used. This technology is based on the method of wood skidding that has bad effect on undergrowth and soil conditions. For the past five years the majority of local fellers did not make re-equipment of their wood harvesting machinery. This is primarily due to the following reasons:

§ Rise in the cost of machinery and their component parts;

§ Inability of conventional machinery to satisfy modern rules of forest harvesting;

§ Extensive competition from foreign technology, such as Timbco, Timberjack which are more productive and reliable, but are of a very high price and have a number of shortcomings:

- they need additional wood roads to the wood-cutting area;

- despite modern technology of felling and logging they do not exclude the underbrush damage as well as causing considerable soil disturbance, particularly during warm seasons;

- inability to log over very steep slopes (more then 30°), and in prohibited areas;

- inability to make partial cuts.

At present in the Khabarovsk territory some companies have tested helicopter logging. This technology reduces to zero a lot of the above mentioned disadvantages. However, one of the most essential disadvantages is the high cost and insecurity of working.

It may be very interesting to have a technology that has all of the advantages of air logging but has none of the negative features peculiar to helicopter logging. Such a technology exists. This is aerostatic airborne vehicles.

Now, when the ecological demands in forests are becoming acute and the timber industry demands immediate productivity, the aerostat technology may play a rather important and favorable role in the forest industry of the Far Eastern region and possibly the whole of Russia.

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1. What problems is Russia’s timber industry faced with?

2. Why the majority of local fellers in the Far Eastern region of Russia did not make re-equipment of their wood harvesting machinery for the past five years?

3. What are the shortcomings of foreign technology, such as Timbco and Timberjack?

4. What are the disadvantages of helicopter logging in comparison with aerostat technology?