1 / 18

Harvesting Willow Rings Around Prairie Marshes

Harvesting Willow Rings Around Prairie Marshes. Presented at the CSBE/SCGAB Annual Meeting North Vancouver, BC, July 14-16, 2008. Philippe Savoie , Research Scientist, AAFC Frédéric Lavoie , Graduate Student Luc D’Amours , Graduate Student Bill Schroeder , Research Manager, AAFC-PFRA

luke
Download Presentation

Harvesting Willow Rings Around Prairie Marshes

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Harvesting Willow Rings Around Prairie Marshes Presented at the CSBE/SCGAB Annual Meeting North Vancouver, BC, July 14-16, 2008 Philippe Savoie, Research Scientist, AAFC Frédéric Lavoie, Graduate Student Luc D’Amours, Graduate Student Bill Schroeder, Research Manager, AAFC-PFRA John Kort, Research Scientist, AAFC-PFRA

  2. Presentation Outline • Introduction: wetlands, natural vegetation, and co-existence with agriculture • Methodology: describe site and prototype for harvesting • Results: harvest rate, biomass recovery • Conclusions

  3. Introduction: (a) Agriculture and wetlands North American Prairie farmland is often close to wetlands, marshes, sloughs and potholes Many of these wetlands were drained in the XXth century to facilitate mechanized agriculture

  4. Introduction: (b) Management of wetlands Current policy is to protect remaining wetland sites because they play an important ecological role for water control, plant diversity and wildlife habitat Find peaceful co-existence between wetland protection and agriculture

  5. Introduction: (c) Vegetation around potholes Typical sequence of vegetation between the pothole and the agricultural field: (a) Cattails and bulrushes; (d) Sedges: (c) Willow. Risk of encroachment, so some form of vegetation control is required Agricultural field Pothole (Source: Huel, 2000 – Managing Saskatchewan Wetlands.)

  6. Introduction (d) Prescribed burning or harvesting One practice is to cut, pile and burn the woody crop on site: expensive and no value from the biomass Another option is harvesting and chipping willow with a modified forage-harvester: machines are very expensive (> $500,000)

  7. Introduction (e) New bio-baler for woody crops AAFC developed a bio-baler in 2006 to harvest willow plantations: moderate cost (≈ $70,000) Modified in 2007 to work in rough terrain and fallow land Other potential applications: harvesting brushes on pasture and under power lines, forest understory

  8. Objective & Methodology (a) Willow ring sites Objective: assess harvesting willow rings with the bio-baler Methodology: Two potholes in Indian Head, SK with natural willow (Salix bebbiana and S. petiolaris) Ring #1: 5-m width, 690 m², average stem diameter 17 mm Ring #2: 3-m width, 1280 m², average stem diameter 12 mm

  9. Methodology: (b) Bio-baler Original bio-baler (2006): 4 saw blades (2.0 m cut width), 12 hammers for shredding, round baler with a single compression belt (1.2 m wide bales, up to 1.5 m Ø and 500 kg) Modified header (2007): saw blades removed, replaced by 20 hammers for cutting (2.3 m width) & shredding; same size bales; 2007 version used in SK

  10. Shredder design parameters Hammer: 1.7 kg, cutting width of 145 mm Hinged on rotor turning at 2200 rpm Cutting tip rotated along a 500 mm Ø Peripheral speed of cutting edge: 58 m/s Distance between hood and flail adjusted for moderate shredding, just enough to ply branches into the baling chamber (minimum chipping) 10

  11. Pushbar system A double push bar system in front of the header pushed the upper part of stems forward to facilitate cutting and grasping by the shredder of the bottom part of the stem. 11

  12. Results: (a) Biomass harvested from willow rings

  13. Results: (b) Harvest capacity and yield

  14. Results: (c) Loss and biomass recovery

  15. Results: (d) Quality of cut Bio-baler with shredder cutter-header (2007 version) left splintered stems after cutting; OK in natural stands Previous bio-baler (2006 version) with saw blades left clean cut stems after harvest (preferred in plantations)

  16. Conclusions The bio-baler successfully harvested willow rings around prairie potholes at rates of 3.5 t/h in low yield and 6.6 t/h in high yield Actual harvest rates would be 2 to 4 t/h because of frequent machinery displacement to access potholes At 40% moisture, the value of biomass (1.2 to 2.4 t DM/h) at about $50/t DM would not compensate the cost; some environmental benefit has to be added to justify mechanical harvest 16

  17. Future perspectives Biomass recovery averaged 62% in willow rings; this can significantly reduce wild fire risk while leaving some residual biomass on the ground Bio-baler could be used to clean alleys in tree plantations, natural forests and other brush covered areas that need to be managed 17

  18. Acknowledgements Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada Natural Resources Canada and CBIN (Canadian Biomass Innovation Network) Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada Questions?

More Related