Increasing access to wood resources : Tech4effect Project Report
Julkaisusarja
Natural resources and bioeconomy studies
Numero
86/2020
Sivut
104 p.
Natural Resources Institute Finland
2020
© Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke)
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-380-089-2
http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-380-089-2
Tiivistelmä
The TECH4EFFECT project, funded by the "Bio Based Industries Joint Undertaking under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program", is an international research collaboration of 20 partners from science and industry. The objective of the project is to enhance efficient wood production, by adapting the management of European forests to the requirements of a modern bioeconomy, and to meet new challenges such as climate change. This publication provides an overview of Working Package (WP) 2 “Increasing access to wood resources”, which has the overall aim to increase the access to wood resources by identifying and promoting forest management practices that increase growth rates in the forests and achieve measurable improvements in the efficiency of forest operations.
The forestry sector, in general, is very traditional in decision-making, sustainable planning and applying management alternatives. WP 2 acknowledges this tradition and evaluates traditional techniques and establishes knowledge-based new principles. On this purpose, WP 2 addresses four main objectives: 1) the increase of the access to wood resources; in general, not the wood production itself is the problem, but the access to wood resources. 2) the efficiency-increase in silviculture; it basically is a traditional expression for the management of forest stands. 3) the accessibility increases in the forest supply service business structure. 4) the idea of upscaling the suggestions for improvement; it means to ensure a validity on a larger scale.
The first step in the process towards the realization of the mentioned objectives was an assessment of the existing key silvicultural systems in Europe (Task 1). Through this assessment it became evident that shortcomings and corresponding improvement measures in European forestry heavily depend on the existing tree species and the geomorphological circumstances, e.g. if a region is mountaineous or flat. The thereby identified potential for increased access to wood resources included two principal measures, an intensification of thinning and an enhancement of mechanization. It is apparent that in Northern European countries the degree of mechanization is already very high, and the main focus was on the intensification of thinning. In contrary, Central-, and Southern European countries have a different situation with a lower degree of mechanization, and therefore the boost of mechanization is the prevalent need.
In a second step, case studies for the implementation of the formulated potentials were carried out (Task 2). Case studies showed that schematic thinnings executed by fully mechanized harvesting systems (harvester-forwarder combination) are reasonable. This way the mechanization is not anymore, an auxiliary work step for the execution of silvicultural decisions but is an integral part of the silvicultural concept. This implies that a new conception of what silviculture is, is necessary, and that mechanization alternatives must be an integral part of silvicultural planning. The case studies on the business processes of silvicultural and harvesting services suggest that in wood mobilization gains regarding process interactions can be expected if small scale forest owners organize the management of stands by using public online business tools compared to the traditional direct inquiry alternative or when long-term forest management agreements are applied by forest owner associations ultimately providing the potential to increase planning horizons and the potential to reduce purchase lead times (Task 4).
The third step consisted in developing a harvesting-systems map for Europe. We considered in different harvesting systems, ranging from manual harvesting with chainsaw, semi-mechanized chainsaw-cable yarding to fully mechanized harvester-forwarder combinations. We developed a methodology to assess the most suitable harvesting system based on stand properties, terrain and road density, utilizing large-scale spatial-explicit stand structure maps. The upscaled harvesting-systems map showed the large potential for the application of fully mechanized harvesting systems on European scale (Task 3).
The forestry sector, in general, is very traditional in decision-making, sustainable planning and applying management alternatives. WP 2 acknowledges this tradition and evaluates traditional techniques and establishes knowledge-based new principles. On this purpose, WP 2 addresses four main objectives: 1) the increase of the access to wood resources; in general, not the wood production itself is the problem, but the access to wood resources. 2) the efficiency-increase in silviculture; it basically is a traditional expression for the management of forest stands. 3) the accessibility increases in the forest supply service business structure. 4) the idea of upscaling the suggestions for improvement; it means to ensure a validity on a larger scale.
The first step in the process towards the realization of the mentioned objectives was an assessment of the existing key silvicultural systems in Europe (Task 1). Through this assessment it became evident that shortcomings and corresponding improvement measures in European forestry heavily depend on the existing tree species and the geomorphological circumstances, e.g. if a region is mountaineous or flat. The thereby identified potential for increased access to wood resources included two principal measures, an intensification of thinning and an enhancement of mechanization. It is apparent that in Northern European countries the degree of mechanization is already very high, and the main focus was on the intensification of thinning. In contrary, Central-, and Southern European countries have a different situation with a lower degree of mechanization, and therefore the boost of mechanization is the prevalent need.
In a second step, case studies for the implementation of the formulated potentials were carried out (Task 2). Case studies showed that schematic thinnings executed by fully mechanized harvesting systems (harvester-forwarder combination) are reasonable. This way the mechanization is not anymore, an auxiliary work step for the execution of silvicultural decisions but is an integral part of the silvicultural concept. This implies that a new conception of what silviculture is, is necessary, and that mechanization alternatives must be an integral part of silvicultural planning. The case studies on the business processes of silvicultural and harvesting services suggest that in wood mobilization gains regarding process interactions can be expected if small scale forest owners organize the management of stands by using public online business tools compared to the traditional direct inquiry alternative or when long-term forest management agreements are applied by forest owner associations ultimately providing the potential to increase planning horizons and the potential to reduce purchase lead times (Task 4).
The third step consisted in developing a harvesting-systems map for Europe. We considered in different harvesting systems, ranging from manual harvesting with chainsaw, semi-mechanized chainsaw-cable yarding to fully mechanized harvester-forwarder combinations. We developed a methodology to assess the most suitable harvesting system based on stand properties, terrain and road density, utilizing large-scale spatial-explicit stand structure maps. The upscaled harvesting-systems map showed the large potential for the application of fully mechanized harvesting systems on European scale (Task 3).
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