Costs of Harvesting Beetle-Killed Lodgepole Pine in Eastern Oregon

摘要

The cost of harvesting and recovering round wood logs and whole-tree chips from small diameter lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) infested by mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus sp.) was studied in the Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon in 1979. Mechanized harvest operations were conducted on six study sites totaling 134 acres. The average cost of producing chips was $31.30 per ton, wet, delivered 50 miles from harvest sites. The average cost of logs was $50.28 per ton, wet, delivered the same distance. A gross energy balance indicates that energy required by harvesting was about 3.4 percent of the gross energy content of the delivered products.