Precision forest harvesting: Wood extraction planning and validation of gis models

Proper planning of forest operations is crucial to get sustainable forest management. Considering that forest sector is one of the major producers of biomass, this aspect has a strong influence on the overall sustainability of biomass supply chain. In the last years the shift towards the precision forestry has been recognized as a powerful tool to allow sustainable forest operations. In particular, GIS approach can be suitable for the development of ad-hoc planning of forest logging, ensuring the respect of the three pillars of sustainability. However, precision forestry needs clear input data. Taking into account what written above, the present study aimed to demonstrate the reliability of three different Digital Terrain Models (DTMs) for the planning of forest operations in mountainous areas of Central Italy, through the Real Distance Buffer Method (RDBM) model. The obtained results showed that the LiDAR based DTM with 1 m resolution had the best performance in the prediction of the accessible areas for extraction operation. Subsequently, a simulation of intervention planning was carried out considering the appliance of two different extraction systems, i.e. cable skidder and cable yarder. The simulation revealed that 17.33% of the intervention area was accessible to cable skidder, while for the remaining surface, cable yarder is needed to ensure the extraction of the overall biomass.