The development and validation of pre-harvest inventory methodologies for timber procurement in Ireland

The development and validation of pre-harvest inventory methodologies for timber procurement in Ireland

Blog Article

This article describes the development and validation of a decision-support system for sawmill wood procurement, dealing specifically with the integration of the pre-harvest inventory procedures, PowerMOS Transistor site-specific dbh/height models and a generic taper equation, with a crosscutting simulator.The crosscutting simulation program faithfully mimics the process of cut-to-length harvesting and provides detailed information on the potential volume, logs count and diameter distributions for different log assortment specifications.Four data sets, consisting of a total of 4153 diameter and height measurements, were used in the validation process.

The sites included two Sitka spruce clearfells, a Sitka Basket spruce thinning and a Norway spruce clearfell.The evaluation process has shown that the developed decision-support system produced accurate results for a wide range of stand types, as long as sufficient large data sets were used, and that it provides the wood procurement manager of a sawmill with an efficient means of gaining a comprehensive insight into the yield potential of standing timber lots and, as such, represents a valuable aid to timber procurement and production planning.