Impacts of wood extraction on soil: assessing rutting and soil compaction caused by skidding and forwarding by means of traditional and innovative methods

Abstract Intensive forestry operations may cause soil compaction, plastic disturbances and rutting, which are responsible for undesirable effects on soils, vegetation water bodies. Despite the numerous studies aimed to identify main factors affecting damages, it still remains unclear whether wood extraction methods driving direction (uphill or downhill) affect impacts of forest machines. This research analyses compaction penetration resistance as well rutting from forwarding skidding using same farm tractor in up- downhill extraction. Rutting was estimated by 3D reconstruction derived portable laser scanning (PLS) close-range photogrammetry structure motion (SfM). Our findings showed that did not damage severity during a 25% slope. On contrary, order reduce is preferable uphill skidding. The results pressure ground caused vehicles can be distributed horizontally, thus also between wheel tracks. bulk density inside tracks after 10 passes increased 40% with 23% displacement trails (7.36 m 3 per 100 trail) significantly higher than (1.68 trail). estimation no significant difference PLS SfM methods, even comparing two digital surface models (DSMs) obtained, if preferred technical practical reasons.