After conventional setting boundaries have been determined, any setting can be analyzed as a helicopter alternative. However, due to the high cost of helicopter systems, it only makes sense to analyze certain types of settings. These are areas that either will provide relatively little return on the investment of constructing a road or will cause an excessive amount of damage to the environment. For instance, if 100 stations of road and two bridge crossings are being built to access 50 acres of land, it may make more economical sense to harvest the area with a helicopter system. Even if it did make economical sense to build the road, the helicopter alternative may still be better due to the environmental impact of the stream crossings. So, the first step in an alternative analysis for helicopter yarding is to make an assessment of the areas that may benefit from a helicopter system.

The next step is to determine the cost differences between the helicopter alternative and the conventional systems. It is important to include the cost of building additional road for the conventional system. A cost analysis can be performed within the SNAP analysis by including a helicopter alternative in the analysis. SNAP will then output the most economical means of harvesting the land.

Next, the environmental impact of the conventional systems must be weighed against the environmental benefits of using the helicopter system. These benefits are mostly reduced sediment to streams due to fewer roads being built.

Finally, these different factors are compared for the conventional and alternative systems, and the final selection of harvest systems is made.

Two of the alternatives analyzed in the Hoodsport planning area present interesting examples of the factors that influence a helicopter alternative analysis. Case 1 is a situation where a bridge crossing and several smaller stream crossings are required to access the land. Case 2 is a situation where there are many existing roads that could be decommissioned in favor of using a helicopter system.

Case 1: One Bridge Too Many?

Case 1, represented in Figure 48, is a prime example of examining the tradeoffs between road cost and yarding cost. It also presents a good example of the environmental impacts of roads. In this situation, the high cost of road construction due to the bridge crossing and the other stream crossings suggest that it may be more economical to avoid building this road. In fact, it is still less expensive to build the roads and use a conventional harvest system, but the costs are close enough that it is worth considering the helicopter alternative for its other benefits.

Figure 48. Helicopter Alternative case 1. The planned road will be eliminated if a helicopter system is used. Otherwise, a bridge will be required to cross the stream before the road enters the Case 1 settings.

There are several factors that suggest the use of a helicopter system. The most notable of these is the series of stream crossings required to access the land. Two type three streams must be crossed here, and the sediment created by these crossings is a strong encouragement to avoid building this road.

In addition, adding a road to the land will take a large amount of land out of timber production. Assuming a right of way width of 50 feet, 100 stations of road corresponds to about 12 acres of lost timber production land. In this situation, that is almost 10% of the available land. With this factored in, the helicopter alternative becomes a viable option.

However, this becomes even more complicated when the possibility of using temporary roads is factored in. Table 14 provides a summary of some potential harvest options.

Table 14 Potential harvest options to be used in Case 1.

From Table 14, you can see that building a temporary road and harvesting in the summer is the best option. However, since this land is low in elevation, it has good potential for winter harvest. If harvesting in the winter is opted for, the tradeoffs here make for a very difficult decision. How much is sediment really worth? At this time, there is no answer to this question. It must be decided on a case by case basis, depending on the political, social, and environmental conditions of the area. The important thing here is to see that there are several options, and they must all be considered when making a decision.

Case 2: Too Many Roads vs. Helicopter

Case 2 examines a very different scenario than case 1. Case 2 examines an area with an excessive number of existing roads (See Figure 49). The tradeoff here is between keeping the roads and using a conventional harvest system or decommissioning the existing roads and using a helicopter system. Clearly the conventional system would cost less money since the roads have already been built. The real question here revolves around the environmental impact of the existing roads. How much impact do these roads have on the environment, and does this impact justify the added cost of using a helicopter system?

Figure 49. The thick red lines represent roads that would be decommissioned if the Case 2 settings were selected for helicopter systems rather than the conventional systems. Notice that there are no stream crossings in the roads to be decommissioned, so the environmental impact of the existing roads is minimal.

In this case, despite the 100 stations of road used to access only 71 acres of timber, the answer is that the existing roads have little environmental impact, and so the cost of decommissioning the roads and using a helicopter system can not be justified. As you can see in Figure 49, although there are many roads in a small area, there are no stream crossings. Therefore, the impact of these roads on sedimentation is very low. The only remaining questions are whether the liability of keeping the existing roads outweighs the economic benefits of keeping them open, and how much of an impact the lost production ground has on the situation. Based on the same logic from case 1, approximately 12 acres of land is lost from timber production. That is 17% of the available land! However, it is still more economical in this case to use the conventional alternative.

Five major areas were examined in the helicopter alternative analysis. The location of these areas can be seen in Figure 50. The results from the helicopter alternative analysis are shown in Table 15.

Figure 50. Helicopter alternative settings are highlighted in yellow. Notice the five distinct groups that have been analyzed in detail. Groups are labeled counterclockwise from the top down heli1 through heli5.

Table 15. Summary of results from the helicopter yarding alternative analysis.

Overall, it is clear that helicopter yarding is typically more expensive than conventional systems. However, when other factors such as sedimentation caused by roads are factored in, the potential benefits of using a helicopter system start to make a strong argument. Therefore, the decision to utilize helicopter systems as an alternative must continue to be made on a case by case basis, looking at the various benefits for each system before a final decision can be made.

As part of the long span analysis, three possible situations can be modeled for further analysis. The three possible situations are hanging to the edge of a Riparian Management Zone (RMZ), hanging across a RMZ and yarding to edge of RMZ, and yarding over an RMZ with full deflection. All three situations were looked at using a 90-foot tower live skyline system. It should be noted that the live skyline analysis performed by LoggerPC may slightly overestimate conditions since it assumes a perfect operator who continually adjusts the skyline length to maximize payload.

Figure 52 shows an example of the first scenario, hanging to the edge of a RMZ.

Figure 52 Hanging to the edge of a RMZ with partial suspension.

Figure 52 has an external yarding distance (EYD) of 2,400 feet and a limiting payload of 9,363 lbs. at turning point 33 and a tailhold of 50 feet. For the record, this same profile was evaluated with full suspension and had a limiting payload of 917 lbs. at turning point 33 (See Figure 53).

Figure 53 Hanging to the edge of a RMZ with full suspension.

The second long span scenario that can be evaluated is hanging across a RMZ and yarding to the edge of the RMZ. For this situation, the EYD was 4,000 feet with a limiting payload of 14,081 at turning point 48. This example shows that by having a 50-foot tailhold across the RMZ makes it possible to have full suspension, where it was not possible in the first situation (See Figure 54).

Figure 54 Hanging across a RMZ and yarding to the edge of the RMZ.

The third long span scenario is yarding over an RMZ with full deflection. This scenario had an EYD of 3600 feet and a limiting payload of 3,199 lbs. at turning point 68 with a tailhold height of 2-feet. This profile was taken from unit 5, which is Southwest of the Five Flags timber sale (See Figure 55 and refer back to Figure 51).

Figure 55 Yarding over an RMZ with full deflection.

As previously stated, there are ten possible long span units within the Hoodsport DNR block. Due to the limiting capabilities of SNAP, long span analysis has to be done manually and then compared to the SNAP results for conventional yarding systems. For reference, the ten long span units are numbered in ascending order going from South to North (See Figure 51).

From the data provided (GIS layers), the following information was gathered for the ten long span units (See Table 16).

Table 16 Long Span analysis data.

From Table 16, summary statistics were calculated for future input into the Binkley Production Equation, which will be discussed in section 12.3.3. Table 17 shows the averages computed for the ten long span units.

Table 17 Long span unit averages computed for Binkley production equation.

Unit No.	No. corridors	AYD	Area (Acres)	Bf/log	Mbf/acre	Slope Under Cable (%)	Slope Perp. Cable (%)
1	4	1050.0	69.05	48.27	13.93	39.0	28.8
2	2	1225.0	42.70	46.75	14.51	42.0	15.0
3	3	708.0	40.04	45.42	12.25	50.0	30.0
4	3	1292.0	60.42	79.35	17.84	63.0	33.3
5	2	1175.0	44.08	70.65	14.43	75.0	47.0
6	2	1850.0	68.14	63.77	19.53	32.5	17.5
7	2	1187.5	50.87	62.83	19.20	37.5	15.0
8	2	1337.5	45.73	114.98	23.49	35.5	10.0
9	1	1350.0	32.87	114.98	22.44	37.0	15.0
10	2	1350.0	70.80	131.81	22.44	34.5	12.5

The results of Table 17 show that for some of the long span units, Mbf per acre is relatively low. This becomes a serious problem with regards to the Binkley production equation, which will be further explained in section 12.3.3.

In order to perform a long span cost analysis, the amount of planned road for conventional yarding that overlaps with the long span units has to be determined. Along with the amount of road that will not have to be built, costs have to be analyzed for constructing, actively maintaining, inactivating, and abandoning these roads over the next 60 years so that a comparison between conventional and long span yarding can be made.

The first step in performing this cost analysis is to input the information displayed in Table 17 into the Binkley production equation plus the additional information shown in Table 18.

Table 18 Input data for Binkley production equation

Unit No.	No. corridors	Int. Support	Logs/Turn	Crew No.	% Prod. Time	Hours/day	O&O Costs	Rig. Costs	Rd. Costs
1	4	0	4.5	5	90	8	$333	$333	$0.00
2	2	0	4.5	5	90	8	$333	$333	$0.00
3	3	0	4.5	5	90	8	$333	$333	$0.00
4	3	0	4.5	5	90	8	$333	$333	$0.00
5	2	0	4.5	5	90	8	$333	$333	$0.00
6	2	0	4.5	5	90	8	$333	$333	$0.00
7	2	0	4.5	5	90	8	$333	$333	$0.00
8	2	0	4.5	5	90	8	$333	$333	$0.00
9	1	0	4.5	5	90	8	$333	$333	$0.00
10	2	0	4.5	5	90	8	$333	$333	$0.00

After inputting the data from Table 17 and Table 18 into the Binkley equation, the following results were obtained.

Table 19 Results of Binkley production equation

Unit No.	$/Mbf	Total Yarding Cost ($)
1	468.94	451 083.18
2	328.41	203 473.16
3	365.55	179 283.27
4	351.58	378 908.33
5	789.83	502 181.93
6	270.43	359 766.08
7	245.45	239 742.17
8	128.99	138 560.29
9	141.80	104 605.02
10	119.71	190 185.79

The next step is to calculate the amount of planned road that will not be built due to long span yarding. For this, the long span units had to be merged into long span areas due to planned road segments that were laid out through multiple long span units. Table 20 shows the amount of unnecessary road associated with each long span area.

Table 20 Number of road stationing associated with each long span area.

Area No.	Unit No.	Unnecessary Road (STA)
1	1
	2
	3
		68
2	4
	5
		8
3	6
	7
		78
4	8
	9
	10
		44

Before going onto further cost analysis, roads cost estimates were obtained from the DNR for High, Medium, and Low road classes. For this analysis, a road class of medium was chosen to best model the planned roads. Table 21 shows cost estimates as pertaining to the Hoodsport DNR block.

Table 21 DNR road cost estimates for the Hoodsport block

Cost	$/STA	Occurrence
Construction	1 850	One time
Reconstruction	275	One time
Inactivation	26	One time
Abandonment	90	One time
Active Maintenance	17	Annual
Inactive Maintenance	8	Annual

Now, with the information provided in Table 21, a cost of dollars/station and total road construction costs saved can be computed as Net Present Value (NPV) over a 60-year period with an interest rate of 6 percent. The Net Present Value for these costs is displayed in Table 22. Note that these costs are the amount saved by not building these roads due to long span yarding.

Table 22 Comparison of Active, Inactive, and Abandonment NPV costs.

Area No.	Unnecessary Road (STA)	Active (NPV)		Inactive (NPV)		Abandon (NPV)
		$/STA	$ Total	$/STA	$ Total	$/STA	$ Total
1	68	2 124.74	144 482.58	2 111.51	143 582.39	2 155.73	146 589.34
2	8	2 124.74	16 997.95	2 111.51	16 892.05	2 155.73	17 245.80
3	78	2 124.74	165 730.02	2 111.51	164 697.45	2 155.73	168 146.60
4	44	2 124.74	93 488.73	2 111.51	92 906.25	2 155.73	94 851.93

After receiving the results from SNAP for conventional yarding, these costs had to be compared to long span yarding costs. Before doing this, the percentage of each conventional unit that was in a long span unit had to be determined. The conventional yarding costs were then weighted and averaged in order to compare the cost of yarding a long span unit to a conventional. This averaging was required because conventional sale boundaries do not match up identically with long span boundaries. Table 23 shows the results of the comparison between long span and conventional yarding costs for the four long span areas within the Hoodsport block.

Table 23 Economic comparison of Long Span and Conventional Yarding.

In Table 23, it can be seen that the cost to long span yard is greater in all four areas than the cost to yard conventionally. The reason for this is due to the low timber volumes within these four areas. Although it is not economically feasible to long span these four areas currently, it may be 10 to 15 years in the future. The reason for this is that long span yarding is heavily dependent on large volumes of timber, which translates into large turn weights.

Due to the differences between long span and conventional system requirements and their associated production costs, the resultant setting boundaries for long span units end up being very different from the shape of conventional setting boundaries. In the long span case settings tend to be a single, long, narrow corridor approximately 4000 feet long by 300 feet wide. Conventional settings on the other hand tend to be circular or semi-circular and radiate outward from a central landing for a distance of no more than 2000 feet. Therefore, due to the differences in setting shapes it only makes sense to compare alternative yarding systems to conventional systems at the watershed or landscape level and not at the individual sale level.

With the exception of ground units, it is infeasible to use the same setting boundaries for conventional and alternative analysis. Due to topographic and mechanical restrictions associated with long span yarding, long span settings are rarely, if ever, the same as conventional settings. Therefore, long span analysis should only be attempted on a landscape wide management plan. On the other hand, alternative analysis will work at the timber sale level, so long as ground systems are compared to ground systems and/or conventional cable systems to helicopter systems.

Scheduling and Networking Analysis Program (SNAP) can pick between conventional and helicopter alternatives. This is because they share setting boundaries. Where SNAP runs into problems is in the comparison between long span and conventional analysis. The software is unable to pick between long span and conventional because if it picks long span in one area, it must readjust the setting boundaries of the adjacent settings. Figure 56 shows the relationship between conventional and long span setting boundary shapes.

Figure 56. Comparing long span and conventional setting boundaries.

As shown in Figure 56, each long span yarding unit includes multiple conventional yarding units.

Using the current version of SNAP there are only two ways that we can compare long span settings to conventional settings. The first is to create two separate setting boundary maps, one with conventional and helicopter settings, and one with long span, helicopter, and conventional settings. Once the two layers have been completed, they must be run through the software separately and compared manually. The problem with this method is by only allowing all long span or no long span, there is no way to only select the best long span settings and keep all other conventional settings.

The second method is to create one setting boundary map with the harvest system (long span, helicopter, or conventional) fixed. This method removes SNAP’s ability to pick the harvest system with the lowest costs. The problem here is that the output of this method is only the scheduling and harvest costs, whereas in the first method the output is harvest system, scheduling, and harvest costs.

Currently, this process requires so many iterations that it becomes infeasible to do by hand. Therefore, the most efficient way to complete this analysis will be to update the current software to include a flowchart it can follow as it makes decisions in the planning process. For example, if long span is selected for one area, the associated road will be removed and no landings can be located on it. Then any areas accessed by that road must be yarded by one of two options, helicopter or long span.

This technology will require a more interactive user interface that will put control back into the hands of the planner. By prompting the planner at major decision points, the software can take advantage of both the planner’s experience with long span harvest planning, and the speed of today’s computer processors.