Slash, or slashings, is a forestry

Forestry

Forestry is the interdisciplinary profession embracing the science, art, and craft of creating, managing, using, and conserving forests and associated resources in a sustainable manner to meet desired goals, needs, and values for human benefit. Forestry is practiced in plantations and natural stands...

 term that refers to coarse

Coarse woody debris

Coarse woody debris is a term used in English-speaking countries for fallen dead trees and the remains of large branches on the ground in forests. Some prefer the term coarse woody habitat . A dead standing tree is known as a snag and provides many of the same functions as coarse woody debris...

 and fine woody debris

Debris

Debris is rubble, wreckage, ruins, litter and discarded garbage/refuse/trash, scattered remains of something destroyed, or, in geology, large rock fragments left by a melting glacier etc. The singular form of debris is debris...

 generated during logging

Logging

Logging is the cutting, skidding, on-site processing, and loading of trees or logs onto trucks.In forestry, the term logging is sometimes used in a narrow sense concerning the logistics of moving wood from the stump to somewhere outside the forest, usually a sawmill or a lumber yard...

 operations or through wind

Wind

Wind is the flow of gases on a large scale. On Earth, wind consists of the bulk movement of air. In outer space, solar wind is the movement of gases or charged particles from the sun through space, while planetary wind is the outgassing of light chemical elements from a planet's atmosphere into space...

, snow

Snow

Snow is a form of precipitation within the Earth's atmosphere in the form of crystalline water ice, consisting of a multitude of snowflakes that fall from clouds. Since snow is composed of small ice particles, it is a granular material. It has an open and therefore soft structure, unless packed by...

 or other natural forest disturbances

Forest dynamics

Forest dynamics describes the underlying physical and biological forces that shape and change a forest. That is, the continuous state of change that alters the composition and structure of a forest....

. Slash generated during logging operations may increase fire hazard and some North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

n states have passed laws requiring that logging slash be treated. Logging slash can be chipped and used for the production of electricity or heat in cogeneration

Cogeneration

Cogeneration is the use of a heat engine or a power station to simultaneously generate both electricity and useful heat....

 power plants.

In parts of the world where logging takes place on soft ground

Peat

Peat is an accumulation of partially decayed vegetation matter or histosol. Peat forms in wetland bogs, moors, muskegs, pocosins, mires, and peat swamp forests. Peat is harvested as an important source of fuel in certain parts of the world...

 the branches and tops of trees can be used as part of the timber harvesting process to provide a track for forest machines

Harvester (forestry)

A harvester is a type of heavy forestry vehicle employed in cut-to-length logging operations for felling, delimbing and bucking trees. A forest harvester is typically employed together with a forwarder that hauls the logs to a roadside landing.- History :...

to travel upon. Utilizing slash in this manner mitigates ground damage.

External links

• A Slash/Mulch site in Colorado