Abstract
The sustainable supply of timber is one of the most important forest ecosystem services and a decisive factor determining the long-term profitability of forest enterprises. If timber production is to be economically viable, there must always be a way to analyse forest stands and trees felled for exploitation with regard to the wood assortments they contain. Only then can the expected timber yields, achieved by various silvicultural strategies or actions and different sorting options, be quantified with sufficient accuracy. The SorSim assortment simulator was developed for forest practitioners and forest scientists in Switzerland to realistically simulate the sorting of individual trees and entire forest stands based on defined specifications. SorSim has a simple user interface and comes in a number of different language versions (G, E, F). The software is implemented in Java, making it platform-independent. It can be downloaded for free at (https://www.wsl.ch/en/projects/sortimentsimulator-sorsim.html). This article provides an overview of how the simulator works and demonstrates its potential applications based on a practical and a scientific example. A particular practical advantage is that the composition of the assortments of the planned harvests can be estimated according to quantity and value. When used in strategic planning and especially in research, SorSim provides a basis for analysing either long-term developments in yields from forest stands or silvicultural treatment methods. Based on an even-aged and a selection forest stand, the scientific example shows how strongly the assessment of the advantageousness of two different silvicultural strategies depends on the time when the calculation was made (using historical and current assortment revenues and timber harvesting costs). In particular, the combination of SorSim with timber harvest productivity models enables differentiated forest economic insights. Various approaches for value-based optimisation in the sorting of individual trees and for the optimal allocation of harvesting activities to defined customer demands are currently being examined as further SorSim developments.
Highlights
Sustainable timber production, along with all other ecosystem services that forests provide to society, remains an important forest management objective (Forest Europe 2015, EASAC 2017)
There are various economic methods in forestry for assessing the long-term economic viability of different silvicultural treatment strategies and timber harvesting measures. Many of these methods are derived from the field of investment planning (Klemperer 1996, Navarro 2003), such as the net present value (NPV) method (Fürstenau et al 2007, Seidl et al 2007, Pukkala 2016), the land expectation value (LEV) method or Faustmann formula (Hanewinkel et al 2010, Hanewinkel et al 2013, Nölte et al 2018), and the annuity method (Möhring and Rüping 2008, Hanewinkel et al 2014a, Blattert et al 2018)
We have described a simulator programme for sorting individual trees and entire stands into marketable timber products
Summary
Sustainable timber production, along with all other ecosystem services that forests provide to society, remains an important forest management objective (Forest Europe 2015, EASAC 2017). There are various economic methods in forestry for assessing the long-term economic viability of different silvicultural treatment strategies and timber harvesting measures. The economic viability of any harvesting activity has to be accurately calculated within the framework of short-term planning Such a preliminary calculation provides a solid basis for forest owners’ negotiations with timber harvesting service providers and timber buyers, as well as for controlling timber transport. In both long-term and short-term forest management planning, the costs of timber harvesting and the revenues from marketable products need to be quantified using models. Based on historical and current cost approaches, timber prices and harvesting productivity, the profitability of an even-aged stand is compared with that of a selection stand
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