Pre-harvest tree and stand assessment for improved log allocation within the wood supply chain (Oral presentation).

Fakultät für Umwelt und Natürliche Ressourcen

Opferkuch M, Becker G, Jaeger D, Seipp R

Pre-harvest tree and stand assessment for improved log allocation within the wood supply chain (Oral presentation).

Opferkuch M, Becker G, Jaeger D, Seipp R: Pre-harvest tree and stand assessment for improved log allocation within the wood supply chain (Oral presentation). 2013 (FORMEC 46th International Symposium on Forestry Mechanization Stralsund, Germany).

Konferenzbeiträge

Despite several attempts in the past to move the decision to allocate the right logs for specific products upstream to an earlier stage in the wood supply chain in order to increase efficiency in the wood industry, these decisions are currently mainly still taken further downstream at the wood yards of the processing industry. This is in conflict with the enormous optimization potential of cut-to-length harvest operations, if bucking decisions are taken based on limited information and restrictions such as the need to supply logs from the actual harvest operation instead of choosing the right stand to harvest for the actual industry demand. This results in limited options for optimization. Long log systems in combination with fully integrated industry sites and powerful stationary scanning and optimization tools could be one way to overcome this. However, today’s portable scanning technologies such as terrestrial LiDAR put forest inventory departments in the position to capture the required good information on the forest resource before harvest. Especially automatically detectable dimensional information on the tree and stand quality before harvest and bucking in addition to the already relatively good volume data has the potential to increase the possibilities for optimal harvest and bucking decisions. More specifically these are information on the external quality features like taper, sweep, ovality and branchiness. While the first are fairly easy to assess automatically by terrestrial LiDAR, it is in particular the feature branchiness that needs specific attention here. On the one hand because it is of major importance for log grading and on the other as there exists no information to date about allometric functions between the detected branch diameter over bark and the respective branch base diameter after delimbing. The presented study shows allometric functions to predict the branch base diameter on Norway spruce relevant for log grading based on branch diameter values over bark and proposes procedures to incorporate these into the assessment of standing timber for an optimized allocation of the right log to the right product.

Professur für Forstliche Verfahrenstechnik
Prof. Dr. Thomas Purfürst
Werthmannstr. 6
79085 Freiburg

Tel: 0761-203-3567
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Email: thomas.purfuerst@foresteng.uni-freiburg.de
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