Forest Operations, Engineering and Managment

Forest operations represent the active element of productive forest management, where costs are incurred and revenues accrued. Of course, there is much scope for minimizing the former and maximizing the latter, and a very strong interest in doing so. As one of the many instances of human activity, forest operations shape the environment and affect the lives of people, for better or for worse. Efficiently managed forest operations offer the highest benefit and the lowest cost in all fields: financial, social and environmental. Increasing the efficiency of forest operations is the main goal of forest engineering, which represents a special sector of interest within the field of forestry, while maintaining a cross-disciplinary character, which is necessary for covering the many facets of forest work. Indeed, forest engineering draws from a number of different disciplines, which obviously include forestry and engineering, but also economics, medicine, geography and biology, to just mention a few. Forest engineering generally deals with practical issues that have a strong economic impact, concentrated within a relatively short time span. For this reason, the industry has always had a strong interest in forest engineering, which explains the close connection between scientists and economic operators. Supported by the industry, forest engineering research has always been very active, advancing technological progress in forestry. This book collects a representative sample of the most recent papers on the subject, which come from many different countries and cover a large variety of subjects, confirming the wide scope covered by forest engineering. The book contains some of the classic productivity studies that are at the foundation of forest engineering, as well as a number of site impact studies--by now a confirmed pillar of forest engineering research. Other important papers included in this collection cover ergonomics, worker health and safety and business issues. Additional works address the harvesting, processing and storage of wood biomass, indicating the strategic place occupied by wood energy research in modern forest engineering.