Colin Saunders

Technical Development Forester, Centre for Forest Resources and Management

Colin started his forestry career when he was 15 in South Scotland, gaining his forestry qualification at the Scottish Forestry School in Inverness. He has specialised in harvesting operations in England, Scotland & Wales, using a chainsaw on production, managing contract operations and he was involved with the first mechanised harvesting machines used in the UK. He transferred to Technical Development in 1994 and has worked on a variety of operational projects in partnership with the Forest Enterprise, Forestry Commission, Forest Research, Health & Safety Executive and European Concerted Action Projects.

Current role

Technical Development Forester, Centre for Forest Resources and Management

Working within the Technical Development Group, specialist on mechanised harvesting operations, cableway extraction and mechanised health & safety issues.

Current programmes

Harvesting and transport

• Cableway techniques: reviewing historical information on cableway extraction systems to ensure that information on operating systems is not lost
• Excavator based cableway extraction system: describing developments
• Soft ground harvesting techniques: redrafting and updating a previous report
• Harvesting and ground preparation on steep ground
• Methods to reduce site impact on broadleaved sites
• Machinery Standards for operator protection
• Timber chain supply: investigating the management and control of the ‘timber supply chain’ from the forest to the customer in order to quantify the most efficient way to transfer stock, production and coupe inventory data between harvesting machines and the office.

Integrated management
Investigating the health management of machine operators and whole body vibration, the latter collecting data on vibration levels which operators experience when using forest machinery.

Research areas

• Harvester, forwarder and cableway operations
• Operator health and safety issues and machine ergonomics
• Ground preparation
• Environmental protection
• Forest establishment

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Main recent publications

Saunders, C.J. & Ireland, D. (2005). Extraction route trial on sensitive sites ^(PDF-308K).  Forestry Commission Technical Note 10.

Saunders, C.J. & Murgatroyd, I.R. (2005). Protecting the environment during mechanical harvesting operations ^(PDF-1097K). Forestry Commission Technical Note 11.

Saunders C.J. (2003). Chainsaw debuttressing of standing timber ^(PDF-6293K). Forestry Commission Technical Note 5.

Saunders C.J., Jones W.L. (2002). Harvesting machine Census 1999 - 2001 ^(PDF-2025K). Forestry Commission Technical Note 1.