Slutavverkningsuppföljning med drönare

Sammanfattning: Drones, how they can be introduced and ease the modern forestry, is something that has started to be discussed around the coffee tables at the forestry office´s in Sweden. When these are getting more easily accessible and better and better more people are starting to see the possibilities and use of the drones. The purpose with this study was to find out whether the drones can compete with the traditional ways, when it comes to time and quality in the area of follow-through after a clear cut has been done. The study was performed as a field study which begun with the random selection of 50 sites that was going through a follow-through. These sites varied in size, shape and distance to the nearest road. Every second time when a site was followed through, it started with the launch of the drone performing the follow-through and then when that was done, and the data was collected the site were walked through searching for the same data. Later, on the next site the follow up started the other way around. The results showed the drone as way more time efficient compared to the traditional way by foot. At most the drone saved up to 30 minutes of field time. The result was most noticeable on large sites and those which had a considerably longer distance for the forwarder. The only time the result was the other way around were if the site was small and located close to the road. Except these results, alternative use of the drones was found in the possibility to find left timber that were hidden underneath the snow.