Determining Radiata pine value and log product yields

 
Good metrics of the quantity, quality and location of timber resources within each forest are essential for ensuring that wastage is minimized, harvest and volume growth increments are balanced, log products are optimally matched to markets, and the value of the forest is maximized at the time of harvest. New approaches to obtaining these metrics are being examined with the goals of increasing their accuracy and reducing their data gathering costs.

Terrestrial laser scanning (also known as terrestrial LiDAR) is receiving a large amount of attention in Europe, New Zealand, Australia and the USA as a new approach for gathering detailed descriptions of individual stems and their location. Interest in the technology is also expanding in other parts of the world (e.g. South Africa and Uruguay). Progress and the very latest results on how the technology is being employed operationally by forestry companies will be a major part of the upcoming ForestTECH 2009 series being run for Australasian forest owners, managers and technical foresters in mid November.

Recent research evaluating the use of terrestrial laser scanning technology and an optimal bucking algorithm to determine log product yields and tree value in South Australian radiata pine plantations will be part of the ForestTECH 2009 programme. Results comparing terrestrial LiDAR with manual measurements, harvester with manual measurements, and terrestrial LiDAR with harvester measurements will be discussed.

For those wanting to get the very latest updates on forest data collection, sampling and inventory tools and remote sensing technologies, remember today is the LAST DAY for EARLYBIRD registrations to ForestTECH 2009. Full details on the New Zealand and Australian programmes can be found here


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