Georeferenced Wood Harvesting

Optimally usable data

Two major challenges regarding the technical production are the precise billing of harvested trees per owner and gentle treatment of forest soil. Using newly developed single tree navigation algorithms, the Virtual Forest provides new solutions based on manual or automated marking of trees. The exchange of data between the biological and technical production allows for an optimal data usage and provides the basis for a permanent update of inventory by production data (permanent inventory).

How it works in practice

A wood harvester fells the trees which were previously marked manually on site or by using the virtual model. Therefore, the harvester driver is guided by a single tree navigation system. Sensors mounted to the harvester measure the precise tree positions so that after a query issued to the Virtual Forest GIS every tree can be assigned to its owner. At the same time the forest machine gathers various attributes of the surrounding trees to update the Virtual Forest database and to allow for new thinning planning methods. Skidding is executed by a forwarder equipped with an automatic tire inflation system to adjust the pressure to the current soil condition in order to preserve the soil as well as possible.