Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) photogrammetry is one of the most effective methods for capturing a terrain in smaller areas. Capturing a steep terrain is more complex than capturing a flat terrain. To fly a mission in steep rugged terrain, a ground co...
Accurate modeling of flood flow hydrographs for small forested catchments in steep mountainous terrain is challenging because of large errors in the estimation of response time using existing empirical equations. The time of concentration (TC) for a...
A heterogeneous robotic system that can perform various tasks in the steep vineyards of the Mediterranean region was developed and tested as part of the HEKTOR—Heterogeneous Autonomous Robotic System in Viticulture and Mariculture—project...
Cable yarding is the most commonly used technique for harvesting timber from steep terrain in central Europe. During the planning process, one important task is to define the cable road layout. This means that the harvesting technology and cable road...
Despite relatively high road density in the forests of Switzerland, a large percentage of that road network does not fulfill best practice requirements. Before upgrading or rebuilding the road network, harvesting planners must first determine which a...
Forest roads, as a prerequisite for high-quality forest management, should be optimally distributed in order to avoid negative environmental impacts and to best fulfill their task. In the design phase of forest roads, it is necessary to know which fa...
The objective of this case study was to develop and test a specific survey protocol for monitoring tensile forces for winch-assisted harvesters and forwarders with a mounted or integrated constant-pull capstan winch technology. Based on the designed...
Winch-assisted harvesting has expanded considerably in recent years as it enables ground-based machines to work safely on steep slopes. To analyze operator exposure to whole-body and hand–arm vibration (WBV, HAV) and noise exposure (LAeq, LCpea...
Skid trails constructed for timber extraction in steep terrain constitute a serious environmental concern if not well planned, executed and ameliorated. Carrying out post-harvest surveys in monitoring constructed trails in such terrain is an onerous...
Despite similarly steep terrain, the productivity of forest harvesting operations in Japan is lower than in Central Europe. Harvesting systems in Japan are typically characterized by the four production processes of felling, yarding, processing, and...
Global Forest Watch (GFW) provides a global map of annual forest cover loss (FCL) produced from Landsat imagery, offering a potentially powerful tool for monitoring changes in forest cover. In managed forests, FCL primarily provides information on co...
Steep country harvesting has been identified as the main bottleneck to achieving greater profitability in the forestry sector of New Zealand and Australia. An improvement of efficiency, work safety and environmental sustainability should be realized...
Digital terrain models (DTMs) are considered important basic geographic data. They are widely used in the fields of cartography, land utilization, urban planning, communications, and remote sensing. Digital photogrammetry mainly based on stereo image...
Biological invasions are a major global threat to biodiversity and often affect ecosystem services negatively. They are particularly problematic on oceanic islands where there are many narrow-ranged endemic species, and the biota may be very suscepti...
This paper employs Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) methods to develop a numerical model of an oscillating buoy-wave energy converter and investigates the impact of steep seabed topography near islands and reefs on its performance. The model’...
The goal of this study was to develop a GIS-based Decision Support Model for selecting the best timber harvesting systems on steep terrain. The model combines multiple layers, each representing an important factor in mechanized logging. These layers...
Point clouds derived using structure from motion (SfM) algorithms from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly used in civil engineering practice. This includes areas such as (vegetated) rock outcrops or faces above linear constructions (e.g...
With the increasing mining depth, the stability of open-pit mine slopes has become an increasingly important concern. This study focuses on an open-pit mine in Southwest China and utilizes unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology to gather data from...
Forest attributes such as tree heights, diameter distribution, volumes, and biomass can be modeled utilizing the relationship between remotely sensed metrics as predictor variables, and measurements of forest attributes on the ground. The quality of...
Steep rock slopes present key opportunities and challenges within Earth science applications. Due to partial or complete inaccessibility, high-precision surveys of these high-relief landscapes remain a challenge. Direct georeferencing (DG) of unoccup...
Cable-based yarding technology has had a long tradition on steep slopes in Europe, and the new implementation of yarding functions in recent decades favored operational efficiency and lower extraction costs. The main goal of this study was to evaluat...
The current use of photogrammetric systems with RPAS (remotely piloted aircraft systems) for the acquisition of topographic data in every type of coastal area has the benefit of a low risk for the personnel involved, good precision, increased product...
Steep terrain harvesting can only be implemented by a limited set of operational alternatives; therefore, it is important to be efficient in such conditions, in order to avoid incurring high costs. Harvesting abiotically-disturbed forests (salvage ha...
LiDAR-derived digital elevation models can reveal road networks located beneath dense forest canopy. This study tests the accuracy of forest road characteristics mapped using LiDAR in the Santa Cruz Mountains, CA. The position, gradient, and total le...
Advection errors are common in basic terrain-following (TF) coordinates. Numerous methods, including the hybrid TF coordinate and smoothing vertical layers, have been proposed to reduce the advection errors. Advection errors are affected by the direc...
The study was devoted to the analysis of feller buncher platform leveling systems. The widespread use of these systems in the design of modern feller-buncher machines makes the study relevant to assess operational efficiency. The analysis was conduct...
The global digital elevation model (DEM) is important for various scientific applications. With the recently released TanDEM-X 90-m DEM and AW3D30 version 2.2, the open global or near-global coverage DEM datasets have been further expanded. However,...
Retention forestry, including the retention of woodland key habitats (WKH) at the forest stand scale, has become an essential management practice in boreal forests. Here, we investigate the spatial distribution of 9470 habitat patches, mapped accordi...
New techniques have recently appeared that can extend the advantages of grapple yarding to fast-growing plantations. The most promising technique consists of an excavator-base un-guyed yarder equipped with new radio-controlled grapple carriages, fed...
Evapotranspiration is a key variable of the hydrological cycle but poorly studied in Alpine ecosystems. The current study aimed to characterise the impact of topography and temporal variability on actual evapotranspiration (ETa) and its environmental...
Large scale windthrow salvage logging is increasing in Central Europe because of the growth of severe atmospheric events due to global heating. Sustainable forest operations in these conditions are challenging in terms of both productivity performanc...
This study investigated the influence of groundwater flux and temperature on denitrification in a steep coastal agricultural Island in western Japan. Push–pull tests (PPTs) were conducted at depths of 3 m, 15 m, and 30 m, during winter, spring,...
This research aimed to study the applicability and limitations of a distributed hydrological model under discontinuous steep topography and hydrogeological conditions. Based on GIS spatial analysis, typical cases of steep and gentle terrains were sel...
The wake behavior of wind turbines in complex terrain is influenced by the combined effects of atmospheric turbulence and terrain features, which brings challenges to wind farm power production and safety. Despite extensive studies, there remains a g...
The transport and deposition of atmospheric particulate matter have attracted significant attention recently due to the increasing frequency of extreme disaster events, such as dust storms, volcanic eruptions, and extensive forest fires. The size dis...
Route planning considering terrain information is useful for the navigation of autonomous ground vehicles (AGV) on complicated terrain surfaces, such as mountains with rivers. For instance, an AGV in mountains cannot cross a river or a valley that is...
Monitoring steep slopes in mountainous canyon areas has always been a challenging problem, especially during the construction of large hydropower projects. Effective monitoring is crucial for construction safety and operational security. However, und...
Landslides are one of the critical natural hazards that cause human, infrastructure, and economic losses. Risk of catastrophic losses due to landslides is significant given sprawled urban development near steep slopes and the increasing proximity of...
Distributary channels at the delta front of lacustrine basins play a crucial role in transporting terrigenous sediments and redistributing depositional facies along the basin margin. These channels are also significant reservoirs for oil and gas. Thi...
Spaceborne interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) techniques are important for landslide detection and monitoring; however, several limitations and uncertainties, such as the unique north–south flying direction and side-look radar obs...
Accurate and comprehensive characterization of high-steep slopes is crucial for real-time risk prediction, disaster assessment, and damage evolution monitoring. The study focused on a high-steep rocky slope along the Yanjiang Expressway in Sichuan Pr...
Wind flow over complex terrain is strongly influenced by the topographical features of the region, resulting in unpredictable local wind characteristics. This paper employs numerical simulation to study the wind flow at a towering peak extending out...
Mountainous hardwood mixed stands offer challenges to timber harvesting operations in practice, including a harsh climate, variable topography, steep terrain, and large-sized timbers. This paper aims to develop productivity and cost models for a moun...
Although forest road networks are an important infrastructure for forestry, recreation, and sustainable forest management, they have a considerable effect on the environment. Therefore, a detailed analysis of the various benefits and associated costs...
Normalized point clouds (NPCs) derived from unmanned aerial vehicle-light detection and ranging (UAV-LiDAR) data have been applied to extract relevant forest inventory information. However, detecting treetops from topographically normalized LiDAR poi...
In the Shatt Al-Arab basin, soil erosion is a major problem due to the steepness of the terrain and the significant difference in altitude between the upstream and downstream parts of the basin. Vast quantities of soil are moved annually, resulting i...
The selection of the most suitable alternative for harvesting operations is a challenging activity which is manageable via precision forest harvesting. In this study, an approach based on a combination of GIS (Geographic Information System) and AHP (...
(1) Background: Austria’s use of fully mechanized harvesting systems has been continuously increasing. Technical developments, such as traction aid winches, have made it possible to drive on increasingly steep terrain. However, this has led to...
Valley path planning on 3D terrains holds significant importance in navigating and understanding complex landscapes. This specialized form of path planning focuses on finding optimal routes that adhere to the natural contours of valleys within three-...
For identification of forested landslides, most studies focus on knowledge-based and pixel-based analysis (PBA) of LiDar data, while few studies have examined (semi-) automated methods and object-based image analysis (OBIA). Moreover, most of them ar...
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