Precision Forestry:

What is Precision Forestry?

Precision Forestry uses high technology sensing and analytical tools to support site-specific, economic, environmental, and sustainable decision-making for the forestry sector supporting the forestry value chain from bare land to the customer buying a sheet of paper or board.“  PF thus provides for additional, adequate quality information about forests and the manufacturing of forest products to help maximize economic return within accepted, current constraints. It provides the tools to make good decisions, to obtain highly repeatable measurements, to take accurate actions, and provides for processes to initiate, cultivate and harvest trees, as well as enhance bio-diversity and other environmental resources. It includes planning and conducting site-specific forest management activities and operations to improve wood product quality and utilisation, reduce waste, increase profits, and maintain the quality of the environment.

Types of tools applied in Precision Forestry:

Measurement and Monitoring Tools

•   LIDAR (Light Detection And Ranging), RS (remote sensing) and IFSAR (Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar) can be used to study forest canopy characteristics, and to develop highly accurate digital elevation models, which are useful in determining stream channel initiation points, topography under forest canopy, etc.

• GPS (Global Positioning System) and INS (Inertial Navigation Systems) can be used for navigation under forest canopies for purposes such as electronically mapping.

•  CT scanning (computer tomography).

Data management 

• GIS (Geographic Information Systems).

• RFID (Radio Frequency Identification).

• Web-based data management (Harvesting systems benchmarking).

• Integrated Equipment Management Systems.

Decision support

•  Spatial Optimization and scenario simulations.

• Decision support systems.

• ICT based Operations Research (OR) techniques (simulations, network analysis) and www applications in order to support DSS systems.

•  Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis. 

• Evaluation of wood quality – wood properties.