Resource Allocation, Pit Quality, and Early Survival of Seedlings Following Two Motor-Manual Pit-Drilling Options

Abstract

Afforestation and reforestation operations constitute an important part of the forest management, being crucial for the sustainability of forests. In such operations, there are three options to prepare the planting holes: manual, partly mechanized, and fully mechanized. Given the high cost of mechanized planting and the ergonomic issues of manual planting, one option which is worth exploring is using of augers, because they have the potential to mitigate and/or eliminate intense physical effort and aspects of some of the ergonomic problems. This study examines the early survival of seedlings following the use of augers to prepare the planting pits. Working time, fuel consumption and physical quality of the pits were evaluated on nine sites for two drill types differentiated by their diameter (150 vs. 200 mm). Time consumption was systematically higher when using the larger drill, while fuel consumption was not found to be statistically different. The larger drill systematically produced pits characterized by less physical quality in terms of resistance to penetration and shear strength, but the early survival of seedlings was higher when using this drill size. Survival probability modeled by means of logistic regression showed that pit size was among the factors that may affect the early survival of seedlings. The study concludes that the larger drill would be more appropriate to plant seedlings, but further studies should be arranged to see if long-term survival would be affected in this case.