Smart Forestry

Within the forestry industry, many operators still rely on frameworks built on manual and analogue processes. This leads to inaccurate data and models, simplified plans with generic forest management prescriptions and inefficiencies in the supply chains, which smart forestry practices will prevent.

Even the digital forerunners are facing challenges both in improving data quality and making use of data incoming from various sources along the supply chain. The need to balance diverse objectives for commercial performance and sustainability goals is also posing new types of challenges for the systems in place.

The Precision Forestry approach builds on accurate resource data and learning models, resulting in site-specific and adaptive forest management, and enabling optimisation with varying objectives at different levels.

With current inventory technologies, data can be obtained at tree-level with reasonable costs, which enables modelling at the same resolution. Enabled by Smart Forestry, tree-level simulation-based optimisation results in accurate forecasts at the timber assortment level. This presents various benefits for forest managers, such as:

• Increased forest productivity and higher wood yields

• Increased return on investment

• Decreased uncertainty in forest asset transactions/valuations

And timber buyers:

• Value-based timber pricing

• Lower delivered costs for wood

• Shorter raw material lead times

Nature and climate are also significant beneficiaries through:

• Improved forest resource efficiency (producing more from less and relieving pressure on natural forest ecosystems)

• Improved carbon balance of forestry (maximal forest carbon sequestration through yield maximisation and decreased greenhouse gas emissions through optimised forestry operations)

In order to optimise a wood supply chain, one needs to have real-time visibility of the harvesting and transport operations that the Smart Forestry-powered Precision Forestry offers.

Natural Climate Solutions integrate forest climate impacts and climate-smart practices into the Smart Forestry solutions in order to help you to address forest climate challenges. We have more than 10 years of experience in knitting together Smart Forestry practices and modern IT innovations, such as advanced monitoring and surveillance technologies.

Forest ecosystems, effective forest management practices and the forestry sector in general play a critical role in regulating the climatic conditions on our planet and helping mitigate climate change that threatens tree species, forest wildlife and also human well-being through food security, for instance. In the context of climate change and global warming, forests sequestrate and store carbon in the woody biomass, reducing carbon concentration and greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere.

New forests efficiently sequester carbon from the atmosphere as carbon sinks and forest soil can store carbon in significant quantities through various stages of decomposition in the long run. The biomass of different tree species in a forest ecosystem can simultaneously provide other benefits, such as improving and protecting biodiversity values and other forest ecosystem services. While providing a sustainable source of renewable raw material for many products and commodities, these products also store carbon. Downstream carbon impacts are dependent on what products are manufactured, how these are produced, what the end-use is and what the alternative products and their alternative climate benefits are.

The resulting climate benefits of forests and forest management operations and practices are highly complex. Forests do not grow equally in space and time, so there are no universally applicable forest management solutions for different forest types and growth conditions. Different tree species combinations generate diverse stand dynamics even within a region.

Forest health and growth can be improved by sustainable forest management activities, but they can change drastically due to natural disturbances, such as extreme weather events that are more and more commonplace due to climate change. In the worst case, this can lead to forest degradation, which is why an adaptive forest management system becomes an important tool for forest owners.

There’s also a loop back to forests – while the products made of forest resources are being produced and used, their real climate impacts over time are connected to various considerations, such as the decision to regenerate harvested forest areas, the tree species, the sustainable forest management objectives and the capability of these new forests to sequester carbon.

Solving the forest management puzzle for all unique forest ecosystems and forestry cases can be a cumbersome task due to regional differences and diverse forest types. However, it is imperative if we want to capture the real value of forests and make truly impactful decisions and forestry operations. With AFRY's climate-smart solutions, you can start taking these steps today.

Our Forest Valuation Services provide profound insights on the forest value components and can even include insights on the non-timber values, such as the value of the forest's carbon. The services harness AFRY's vast forest modelling experience of over 10 years in knitting together modern IT technologies and smart forestry practices.

At its best, forest valuation offers an in-depth understanding of the value composition of forests, help forest owners to enhance the value further, guide decision making, and provide insights regarding the non-timber values of the asset, taking forest management to the next level.

Because of forests' ability to function as carbon sinks and providers of ecosystem services, the valuation of forests has become more critical to forest management than ever. It is inevitable that climate change, forest carbon sequestration and biodiversity will play an increasingly large role in determining the true value of forests.

Ultimately, all forest owners and other forestry professionals that work in forest management are interested in their forest productivity, land use and value, among others. Smart Forestry practices help accurately estimate these factors and they can be maximised through effective forest management.

Forest owners may place different values on their forest or a forest they wish to own. Depending on the stakeholder, the key performance indicators (KPIs) for forest productivity and value are likely to consist of multiple values. These KPIs are typically economic or environmental, but other unique values can sometimes be of interest as well, based on what the end goal for forest management is. The indicators can range from, for example, regular tree growth, effective land use, stable forest health, well-organised forest structure, the amount of woody biomass and good carbon balance to growing diverse tree species within the forest ecosystem.