Forest management, ecosystem, resilience

The internet portal provides insights into many aspects of North Rhine-Westphalia's forests via interactive, user-friendly maps. Forest ecology and management, forest nature conservation, recreational use, damage events, hazard prevention and other topics can be selected to search for specific information. How does climate change affect individual forest sites and which climate adaptation measures are suitable to preserve the functions of the forest as far as possible? The service provides comprehensive information on forest types, functions, management, and use, as well as climate change impacts on forest management. Climate adaptation measures are recommended to make forests more adaptable and resilient, including recommendation of appropriate tree species and mixed stands for different soil and climate conditions. As a comprehensive forest information system for the timber and forestry sector, the portal is aimed in particular at private forest owners and forest-owning municipalities and supports a wide range of evaluations and forestry planning. It is part of the climate adaptation strategy for forests in NRW and integrates databases of the state enterprise Wald und Holz NRW, the State Agency for Nature, Environment and Consumer Protection and the NRW Geological Survey. Relevant climate variables such as soil atmosphere (air temperature, precipitation); land surface (photosynthetic activity, land cover, biomass, forest fire, soil moisture) are integrated.

In the iWald project, a system is being developed enabling forest owners to obtain realistic and technically sound options for the sustainable management of their forests. The individual objectives of the forest owner (private, communal, state) are taken into account as well as the forestry risk minimization and the sustainable conversion of forests while safeguarding the economic, ecological and social forest functions. One of the main results of iWald will be the "iWald App", which can be used to simulate forest growth processes on a smartphone. This will be provided with different entry barriers, so that both the forest layman and the trained forester will find their access to iWald. The goals include activating forest owners, who can thus approach their forest on a playful level, or improving public acceptance of forestry interventions through the possibility of simple visualization of future consequences.

Scanner is under constant development. A measuring device, mounted at the towing hitch of a car. Sensors collect values, to assess the road quality of unpaved, single lane roads. The system consists of ultrasonic sensors to scan the cross section of a road segment, acceleration sensors to get information about the longitudinal roughness and a GPS sensor for locating the information. After data collection, an open configurable software bundle (implemented as GUI modules in iFOS) allows individual settings for the single sensor thresholds and algorithms to adopt the system to the own road maintenance concept. Mounted at the car of the forest ranger an easy and frequent data collection is possible and provides an early and objective knowledge about the constructional decline of road segments. Maintenance costs can  be reduced and reconstruction measures get execute mor accurate.  A logical data interpretation of the sensor values is possible. The assignment of the sensors towards different decay expressions on the road surface was conducted and semi- automatically related to road quality segment classification. Results show, that a single manual optical assessment of road segments miss first phases of road decay and underlines the potential of such systems. Tests and calibrations of the road-scanner allows a good data interpretation for the set task. Many degrees of freedom of the scanner and the data interpretation still leaves some open research questions.

LogBuch enables data aggregation in the forest, a simple evaluation of the data and further processing.  The combination of voice recording and Bluetooth button enables hands-free precise location of trees with simultaneous recording of important information about the tree, such as safety instructions or planning working procedures. The expected cut volume can be determined, and assortments planned. Foresters and harvester operators both receive detailed information (cross-linking with third party systems is supported). Technology: An A 2-frequency GNSS-receiver is connected to a smartphone to estimate the current position. A bluetooth button is used for language analysis. All spoken information can be recorded, automatically transcribed and classified, and the actual position lodged. WLAN is used for data exchange between smartphone, webserver and other users. Data can be exported as a map or table in georeferenced or not referenced formats (xlsx, GeoJson, shp, GPX, map). Applications: Preparation of timber harvesting, establishment of a digital "inventory", area mapping (also planting) by connecting recorded corner points, mapping of skid trails by the line function (harvest control or certification basis), remote navigation via Google Maps. In addition, recording of habitat trees etc., support for hunting organization (high seats, driven hunt stands, stalking routes etc.) and traffic safety measures.

HeProMo is an IT-based tool to predict the costs of timber harvesting scenarios under different aspects such as harvester logging. It allows certain settings to reflect the real situations in the forest. It provides preliminary costing and sensitivity analysis. estimation of productivity and cost for wood harvesting operations (preliminary costing). Writing and controlling offers for wood harvesting operations. Estimation of variables and their importance (sensitivity analysis). Well suitable for application in teaching , eductaion and research to identify key contributing factors and assessmen of their influence on the results. The productivity model (HeProMO) predicts quickly and with a good accurancy the costs for concrete timber harvestin scenarios. It allows the identification of optimization possibilities. The application is quite easy to handle and gives a solid basis for good economic choices.

The qualification course delivers a Certificate of Advanced Studies (CAS). It is a part-time professional training course designed for company managers and engineers to build up management competences regarding newest economic and engineering procedures and leadership activity competences regarding forestry operations and forestry administration. It amounts to 360 hours or 12 ECTS. Good feedback from former participants about usability of the professional education training.