HeProMo: A decision support tool to estimate wood harvesting productivities

PLoS One. 2020 Dec 31;15(12):e0244289. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0244289. eCollection 2020.

Abstract

In the field of forestry, one of the most economically important ecosystem service is the provision of timber. The need to calculate the economic effects of forest management in the short, medium, and long term is increasing. Forest operations or timber harvesting, which comprises felling, processing, and transport of trees or timber, are responsible for a large part of the costs and environmental impacts associated to forest management or enterprises. From a decision maker's perspective, it is essential to estimate working productivity and production costs under given operating conditions before any operation is conducted. This work addresses the lack of a valid collection of models that allows estimating time, productivities, and costs of labor and machinery for the most important forest operations in forest stands under Central European conditions. To create such models, we used data from forest enterprises, manual time studies, and the literature. This work presents a decision support tool that estimates the wood harvesting productivities of 12 different kinds of forest operations under Central European conditions. It includes forest operations using chainsaws, harvesters, skidders, forwarders, chippers, cable and tower yarders, and helicopters. In addition, the tool covers three models for wood volume estimation. The tool is written in Java and available open-source under the Apache License. This work shows how the tool can be used by describing its graphical user interface (GUI) and its application programming interface (API) that facilitates bulk processing of scientific data. Carefully selected default values allow estimations without knowing all input variables in detail. Each model is accompanied by an in-depth documentation where the forest operation, input variables, formulas, and statistical background are given. We conclude that HeProMo is a very useful tool for applications in forest practice, research, and teaching.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Conservation of Natural Resources / methods*
  • Decision Support Techniques
  • Ecosystem
  • Efficiency
  • Forecasting / methods*
  • Forestry / economics
  • Forestry / methods*
  • Forests
  • Models, Theoretical
  • Trees
  • Wood

Grants and funding

The present work was partially funded by the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) and the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.