The 51st Edition of the annual International Symposium on Forest Mechanisation FORMEC 2018 has been held at the Forestry Faculty E.T.S.I. Montes, Forestal y del Medio Natural belonging to the Technical University of Madrid (U.P.M.) in September. The motto of this edition included originally the wildfires topic: “Improved Forest Mechanisation: Mobilizing natural resources and preventing wildfires”, a relevant issue in Mediterranean Countries.
 |
 |
The organizing Committee was headed by Prof. Eduardo Tolosana and Rubén Laina, and several other professors and students from the Forestry faculty contributed to the Symposium Organization: 149 attendants have come to Madrid from 24 Countriesand have participated in 4 parallel thematic sessions.
Besides the 7 invited presentations from keynote speakers, 87 oral contributions were presented and 19 posters were selected. 10 presentation were linked to wildfires, Australia, USA, Italy and Spain were the targered countries.
Distribution of topics
Four contributions were awarded, two with the ECOSTAR-GREENNOVA Awards to the best posters, voted by the attendants, and two oral contributions with the CESEFOR Award to the best oral contribution and other with the CENTRAL FORESTAL – GESTAMP BIOMASS Award to the second best oral presentation.
 |
 |
An improvable figure of attendance was that only 24 out of the attendants were women. Another important data was that 26 among participants came from Enterprises – the rest from Universities and Research Centers. The most represented nationality after the Spanish -27 participants – was German.
The last day of the Symposium, a field trip was organized to Riaza (Segovia) thanks to the support of the Regional Authorities from Junta de Castilla y León and from the Renewable Energies Research Center CEDER-CIEMAT. There were visits to a Forest firefighter crews / Helicopter Base in Sepúlveda where a helicopter firefighting demonstration was performed, and afterwards to a mechanised mixed stand first commercial thinning in Riaza. After a lunch break in Hontanares hermitage, the attendants visited an innovative machine - BioBaler Brushcutter-Bundler – exhibition, and finally a mechanised coniferous mountainous stand third thinning in Cerezo de Arriba.
