Abstract
Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) heartwood is naturally durable wood material which has not been fully utilized in the wood industry. Currently, there are no practical measurement methods for detecting and measuring heartwood in a tree harvesting. The objective of this study was to evaluate the applicability of an electrical impedance spectroscopy and an image analysis of a log end face for pine heartwood measurements from the harvesting perspective. Both methods were tested with a fresh wood material which was collected during the harvesting operations. The results indicate that both methods have potential to measure the heartwood from processed stems with an average heartwood diameter error being less than two centimeters for each method. However, the image analysis of the log end face is only appropriate when visible contrast between the heartwood and a sapwood exists. Our findings indicate that the studied heartwood detection methods show great potential in measuring the heartwood of the stem in the harvesting phase which would ideally benefit later links in wood value chains.
Highlights
The forestry sector is one of the most significant branches of industry in Finland
The statistical difference between ground-truth, image analysis and Electrical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) measured heartwood ratio was tested with a paired sample t-test
The t-test was carried out in three cases: (I) comparing the image analysis results to the ground truth (86 logs); (II) comparing the EIS measurement results to ground truth (33 logs); and III) comparing the image analysis results to the EIS measurement results for those logs that were measured with both methods (22 logs)
Summary
The forestry sector is one of the most significant branches of industry in Finland. The forest sector equals 20 percentages of the export revenues in Finnish national economy (Natural Resources Institute Finland, 2019). The forest industry paid 2.2 billion Euro stumpage earnings to forest owners in 2017, and roughly 70% of the stumpage earnings are paid for sawlogs. Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) is the second most important tree species to Finnish forest industry only after Norway spruce
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