Pack-mules are the archaic logging system that prevailed in the Apennine mountains until few decades ago. Today, despite the dramatic reduction in the number of teams, this system still survives, contrary to all expectations. Given that the system has its merits and cultural value, there is an interest in preserving and enhancing it, perhaps even expanding it.
To do so, however, we must...
In Finland, thinning operations are carried out annually on approximately 0.5 million hectares. Due to the labour‑intensive and costly nature of field inspections, official harvesting quality assessments produced by the Finnish Forest Centre are conducted on less than 1% of this area. For many years, the aspect with the greatest need for improvement has been thinning intensity. Harvester...
Globally, road transportation is a major source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. One possible option to lower GHG emissions of road transportation is to use alternative fuels, for instance liquefied biogas (LBG) and electricity, on vehicles. During recent years, LBG-powered trucks have grown in number even on the road transportation of the forest sector, such as timber trucks and woodchip...
Ongoing climate change and associated damaging events are leading to a significant need for large-scale forest regeneration. The key challenge is to efficiently address the increasing demand for reforestation despite a shortage of skilled workers by means of automated processes. In Germany, reforestation is still predominantly carried out manually and is associated with high labour intensity....
Climate change mitigation requires transformative changes in high-emission sectors, particularly the construction industry, which is responsible for a significant share of global greenhouse gas emissions. The increasing interest in wood-based construction reflects its potential to reduce the global warming potential (GWP) of the built environment while strengthening forest-based value...
Reliable forest stand delineation is a fundamental prerequisite for forest management, harvesting system allocation, and spatial planning. Conventional stand boundaries are typically derived from visual interpretation in the field or from aerial imagery, making them time-consuming, experience-dependent, and only partially reproducible. In response to increasing disturbance dynamics and the...
Greenhouse gas emissions from forest management operations are currently gaining global attention for tackling climate change by reducing the carbon footprint of forestry activities. This study aimed to quantify the carbon footprint of a full rotation teak (Tectona grandis) plantation, identifying key emission sources in silviculture and harvesting This study assessed the carbon footprint of...
Forestry operations are facing increasing structural challenges, including a shrinking skilled workforce, heightened safety requirements, and rising expectations for productivity with reduced environmental impact. These create a clear need for automation technologies that can support or eventually perform demanding tasks autonomously. In 2021, our AORO platform marked a significant milestone...
Efficient wood logistics is essential for minimizing operational costs and reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In Poland, several symptoms of inefficiency—including the fragmentation of forest operations leading to frequent machine relocations, extended transport distances, and the need to move machines to designated parking locations after each working shift—highlight the need for a...
Two-stage trucking systems are increasingly used in steep-land harvesting in Aotearoa New Zealand to reduce the need for the quality of roading and landings required to allow access for on-highway high productivity motor vehicles (HPMV’s). In these systems, stems or processed logs are trans-shipped between a constrained extraction/processing landing and a larger storage and load-out skid using...
In 2026, an Italian machine manufacturer developed a new light yarder designed to match the specifications drafted in 2024-2025 by CNR, through a survey of small-scale logging contractor preferences (presented at FORMEC 2025). That study stressed the importance of practicality and low cost, and directed design efforts towards a lightweight, compact machine that can cope with poor...
In Finland, the forest industry has taken several steps toward more sustainable wood procurement. For example, biogas-powered timber trucks have been introduced, and large companies now require that biodegradable chain oil is used in harvester heads. Biodegradable hydraulic oils entered Finland’s market in the late 1980s and were adopted in forest machinery largely due to industry demand....
Accurate tree species identification in young boreal forests is critical for sustainable forest management, biodiversity monitoring, and bioenergy resource assessment. However, current remote sensing approaches predominantly rely on single-sensor methodologies, limiting classification accuracy in complex young stands where trees exhibit similar heights, small crowns, and subtle spectral...
Wood supply chain and transportation logistics are critical drivers of resilient forest value chains, enabling the reliable, sustainable, and cost-effective flow of a unique renewable resource. In recent years, operational volatility has increased due to disturbance-driven salvage wood peaks, tighter labor markets, and rising expectations about emissions. Despite the sector’s relevance to...
Forest environments pose significant challenges for automated driving due to dense vegetation, irregular terrain, varying illumination conditions, narrow skid roads, and limited or unreliable GNSS availability. In contrast to structured road environments, skid roads often lack clear boundaries and may contain unpredictable obstacles such as branches, uneven ground, and irregularly spaced...
Bark stripping is a major disturbance factor in Central European forests and leads to reduced growth, increased susceptibility to fungal infection, and elevated mortality risk. In operational forest management, severely damaged trees often need to be removed in order to avoid economic losses and secondary infections. Reliable and objective detection of bark stripping is therefore highly...
Forestry cranes play a critical role in mechanized logging operations, yet their core mechanical architecture has changed little over the past decades. As a result, they consume substantial energy, much of which is continuously required to support their own structural mass and payload against gravity, even when not performing productive work. While prior research has focused extensively on...
Forest operations managers handle multiple sources of uncertainty when planning wood supply. Wood sourcing for Nordic forest industries typically include both internal and external suppliers, where the first-line for solving operational deviations from delivery plans involves re-planning of internal supply operations.
This paper presents an adaptation of the typical monthly wood supply plan...
Mixed species forests have been increasingly recognized as an important pillar of sustainability driven ecosystem management under uncertain and more frequent extreme environmental and social conditions. Although knowledge about the resilience of mixed stands has remained somewhat fragmented, the growing frequency of climate related risks has indicated that the importance of mixed stands is...
Steep-terrain forestry ($>30^\circ$) demands a radical departure from conventional machinery to balance operational efficiency with soil protection. This study evaluates a dual-solution framework developed by MSE: the "Shin-Raptor II," a specialized 6,400 kg class lightweight winch-assisted (WA) base carrier, and the "Feller Buncher Saurus (FBZ)," an innovative attachment for integrated...
To meet climate goals and limit global warming there is an urgent need to decarbonize road freight transport, including the forestry sector’s transport. Previous studies have shown that electrification is an effective means for carbon abatement in freight transport and will play a key role. In the project TREE (Transition to efficient electrified forestry transport) 12 electric timber and wood...
Automated Deep Learning for Forest Resource Mapping to Drive Efficient Operational Planning
The efficient planning and execution of mechanised forest operations rely heavily on near-real-time, spatially explicit intelligence regarding forest resources. While the rapid growth of multi-source data—from national inventories to satellite imagery—presents a major opportunity to optimize these...
Growing environmental concerns and increasing pressure on natural resources have intensified the demand for robust sustainability assessment tools in industrial sectors. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) enables the systematic quantification of material and energy inputs, as well as associated environmental emissions, across the entire life cycle of products and technologies. In mechanized forest...
The study will present the implementation of a smart monitoring system based on LoRaWAN technology to support the improvement of safety and operational efficiency in cable yarding on steep slopes.
As a case study area, a typical harvesting intervention with cable yarder in the Italian prealps was chosen.
An LTE-enabled LoRaWAN gateway was mounted on the tower yarder to ensure a stable...
Our project focuses on the development of a teleoperation system for a forestry delimber operating in full-tree applications in Canada. In many regions, full-tree processing involves repetitive tasks: feeding stems, delimbing, cutting to prescribed lengths, handling, and stacking. These operations require precision, are physically demanding, and take place in remote environments. The forestry...
