The Department of Forest Technologies and Construction sets the core agenda of forest management studies and contributes to all study programmes at the Faculty of Forestry and Wood Sciences and other CZU faculties.
Teaching
We teach elementary subjects “Forest Harvesting and Transportation Technologies I and II”, “Harvester Technologies” and “Forestry Mechanization” in Forestry and Forest Engineering study programmes. In other study programmes, the subjects bunch into comprehensive units covering forest harvesting and transportation. Forest engineering structures – especially planning, designing and maintenance of forest and field roads and optimization of the road network and transportation – also belong among subjects we teach. For other faculties, we provide lectures on fundamentals of forest management (in a compendious form) and fundamentals of forest production and technology (technical and managerial aspects). The Department guarantees practices for undergraduates after their first and fourth year of study. During the first practice, the students familiarize with principal operations of forest harvesting (harvesting and wood handling) and wood transportation. Students take their second practice in forest enterprises and they focus on lower-level management and administration.
Research
In research, we concentrate our efforts on harvesting and transportation technologies and their impact on forest ecosystems. We specialize in harvester technologies and cable systems. We study energy and time requirements and economic efficiency of the production, and multi-criteria optimization of technologies. Attention is also paid to stress factors influencing the operators’ performance. We closely cooperate with IUFRO (International Union of Forest Research Organizations, the world’s leading forest research union) on this matter. Our Department coordinates standardization of environmentally sound forest operations technologies’ evaluation in Unit 3.05.00 “Forest Operations Ecology”. Renewable resources of energy, especially dendromass production and processing technology, is another issue of interest for us. Our team explores utilization possibilities of the standard StanForD for registration of harvester-felled timber and we help to create special software for StanForD data analyses. Some members of our Department monitor physical and mental stress of forest workers, using the Biofeedback method and considering the learning curve and workload. In forest engineering structures, we focus on forest roads construction, monitor their current technical condition and the way they influence water run-off and forest environment. The roads can also be used for leisure activities, e.g. cyclo-tourism, and that is what we keep an eye on, too. For more info on our research activities, see the overview of projects and publications or personal web pages of department members.
International relations
Research is what unites us with the world, most of all. Most frequently, we cooperate with professional institutions who focus on similar issues, e.g. in Zvolen, Krakow, Warsaw, Lvov and Vienna. We participate in teacher and doctoral-student mobility programs Erasmus+ and CEEPUS of which we are coordinators for the whole FFWS. Our Department hosts international conferences on regular basis, e.g. FORMEC (Kostelec nad Černými lesy, 2009) and FORTECHENVI 2000, 2003 and 2008. Apart from these, we engage in diverse collaborations with forestry departments in Padua (Italy), Reggio di Calabria (Italy), Thessaloniki (Greece), Ljubljana (Slovenia), Novi Sad (Serbia), Zagreb (Croatia), Isparta (Turkey), Brasov (Romania), As (Norway), Umea, Uppsala (Sweden), Helsinki, Joensuu, Ähteri, Haemenlinna, Rovaniemi etc. (Finland), Riga (Latvia), Kaunas (Lithuania), Lvov (Ukraine), Tharandt, Freissing (Germany), Ossiach (Austria), Dublin (Ireland), Brussels (Belgium), Tokyo, Nagoya (Japan), Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), Tehran (Iran), Stellenbosch (South Africa), Nairobi (Kenya) and other universities, research institutes, specialist publishing houses and manufacturers of forest mechanization in many countries, including North and South America and Australia.
History
Our Department was established in 1990 when the Faculty of Forestry was restored in Prague. Until 2003, it had been called Department of Forest Harvesting and Wood Processing and belonged to the wood sciences part of the Faculty. In 2003, two new departments were established – Department of Forest Harvesting and Department of Wood Processing. The first head of our Department was prof. Ing. Ivan Roček, CSc. (until 2003). In 2016, the Department was renamed as Department of Forest Technologies and Construction.
