The total area of the forests is about 6,222,000 hectares of which around 67% in the mountains. The total volume of wood in the Romanian forests amounts to 1.6 billion m3. The average annual growth of the forests is 33,000x103m3/year. The exploitable potential is about 20,000 to 22,000x103m3.
The waste resulting after woodcutting consists of branches less than three centimetres thick, knots, and roots. So far in Romania the technologies for the knots and roots recovery have not been utilised, so that the respective potential could not be considered in the evaluation of the actual potential.
Fuel wood comes from parts of the cut tree crowns that have no industrial utilisation and parts of the wood to be processed but whose quality is low (is damaged, rotten, etc.).
In the case of the waste resulting from forestry and the fuel wood we considered an average exploitable wood volume with an average density of about 750 kg/m3 and inferior calorific power of about 10.5 MJ/kg.
Cutting area is that of the forest area on which trees harvesting is developing, for their turning to account and for ensuring the favourable conditions for developing the stands.
Cuttings can be:
- successive cuttings representing the trees extraction in 2-4 stages spread over time and space, by means of which the old stand is gradually harvested;
- progressive cuttings representing the not uniform trees extraction only from certain areas;
- gardening cuttings representing the selectively extraction of certain size trees in order to have a forest structure with trees of all ages, for ensuring the continuity of the production process;
- plane cuttings representing those tree extractions that lead to the cutting of all trees on certain areas.
In table 16 wood cutting areas are presented.
| |
Table 16: Wood cutting area |
(ha) |
|
|
|
| |
2000 |
2001 |
2002 |
2003 |
2004 |
| Regeneration wood cutting covered area - total |
54543 |
56391 |
62212 |
68820 |
82247 |
| In the woods |
48966 |
45759 |
52092 |
57008 |
67136 |
| Successive cuttings |
11064 |
9564 |
8429 |
9565 |
9482 |
| Progressive cuttings |
29640 |
29143 |
34461 |
38962 |
46436 |
| Gardening cuttings |
5688 |
4323 |
6142 |
4998 |
6521 |
| Plane cuttings |
2574 |
2729 |
3060 |
3483 |
4697 |
| In the grove |
4097 |
3881 |
4105 |
4329 |
4214 |
| Substitution-regeneration cuttings of the weakly productive and degraded stand |
1480 |
1503 |
1550 |
1659 |
1782 |
| Preservation cuttings |
- |
5248 |
4465 |
5284 |
9115 |
| Forest hygienic and cleaning operations |
658122 |
785229 |
651082 |
693824 |
685270 |
| Fostering cuttings in young forest |
226127 |
181826 |
175834 |
170267 |
182205 |
| Accidental cuttings |
479893 |
461542 |
661593 |
606056 |
635111 |
Forest hygienic and cleaning operations include works periodically applied to the stand since reaching the massive status, taking out hygienic products resulted from normal process of natural elimination (cut down, split, punk or attacked by insects’ trees).
Fostering cuttings in young forests include operations in the crops resulted from afforestation up to the bulk situation in order to assure the crop success and the development of seedlings in good conditions. Accidental cuttings represent the harvest of raw wooden products, resulted accidentally because of natural calamities or clearings. The place where wastes are formed depends on the applied technology and treatment. So the greatest amounts of wastes are obtained at the cutting areas.
