Mastication and Mulching

By definition, “Mastication” means; to chew and/or grind and knead. ‘Mulching” is defined as: Providing any loose covering for exposed forest soils, such as grass, straw, bark, or wood fibers, to help control erosion and protect exposed soils.

Prescription Development
These burn projects have varied from clear-cuts, understory, dozer and hand pile units. The complexity of these units varied drastically from mild to extreme terrain using hand and helitorch firing techniques. We performed the preparation on these projects including slashing and line construction.

Mechanical fuels treatments utilize several different types of equipment to chop, chip, crush, or otherwise break apart fuels such as brush, small trees, and slash into small pieces or chips. The processed fuels carpet the ground, forming a relatively dense, compact layer of woody material.

Mechanical fuels reduction equipment generally consists of a “cutting attachment” and a “prime mover”. The cutting attachment comes in a variety of forms. Common types include a vertically-mounted rotating head (“slashbuster” type) and a horizontally-mounted cutting drum(“brush mulcher”). The prime mover is simply the vehicle that moves the cutting head across the ground, such as an excavator, all surface vehicle (ASV), or a 4-wheel drive tractor.

Firestorm has four deferent types of equipment that perform this operation. These machines are capable of grinding larger trees, either conifer or hardwoods up to 10 inches in diameter at breast height (DBH) up to heights of 60 feet, or as small as a 1 foot tall bush.

There are several applications which we have developed for these mechanical operations:

Land Clearing:

• Brush Cutting
• Tree Stumps
• Right of Ways
• Fire Breaks
• Fuel Reduction

Agricultural:

• Orchard Pruning
• Tree Removal
• Stump Grinding

Municipal:

• Clearing Lots
• Storm Debris
• Golf Courses
• Parks

Commercial Developments:

• Slash Reduction
• Flood Control Channels
• Land Clearing
• Sub-Divisions

Equipment:
The equipment available to us to perform these mechanical operations range from a small 100 horse powered, rubber tracked skid steer machine, for the smaller projects, to as large as a 160 horse powered machine for the larger more difficult projects. Please see brochure/website for more detailed information.

Summary:
Since 2002 Firestorm has completed over 8,000 acres of mastication projects. Clients include: private landowners, community fire safe councils, local land developers, conservation foundations, Department of Interior-Bureau of Land Management and the United States Department of Agriculture-Forest Service.