Thinning crews slash trees for hand or machine piling during many fuel reduction treatments. Usually, the piles are burned later when weather conditions minimize fire risk and the effects of smoke. While widely used, this approach has several key limitations:

• The periods when conditions are suitable for burning (often called windows) are limited, but all the piles can be burned only during these periods.
  
  
• The piles represent an ongoing fire risk.
  
  
• Burning piles in wildland-urban interface areas requires close attention to the effect of smoke on air quality and heightened attention to the risk that fires might escape.

In 2005 a contractor approached the Forest Service about testing an innovative system for biomass removal that offered the potential for low-impact, cost-effective treatment of stands where slash has been hand piled. Partners from Carson City Renewable Resources, Miniveyor Systems, the Forest Service Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit, Intermountain Region State and Private Forestry, the Missoula Technology and Development Center (MTDC), and the Southern Research Station collaborated on a 2-day test of portable conveyors (figure 1) to carry material out of the woods.

Figure 1—Early tests using a portable conveyor to remove
slash were conducted in a gravel pit in Incline Village, NV.