Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

Forest managers and stakeholders need to know the standing volume of trees when making management plans, nature reserves or when selling timber. The aim of this thesis is to present why it is important to know the forest inventories. Especially if they are of high interest or high value like oak forests. The thesis will test if modern technology in silvicultural measurements is up to date, compared to old school analog measuring. To be able to test this, the app Arboreal will be used to provide the tools caliper, height measurer and volume calculation, in a digital format. In this report, measurements will be conducted in one oak stand and one spruce stand.
After measuring ten plots in an oak stand the results showed that using the app was 73% faster than using analog tools. The corresponding result in the spruce forest was 68% faster using the app, compared to using analog tools.
The standing volume in the oak stand was 136.5 m3sk when the app was used, compared to 140.2 m3sk when measured using manual tools. The equivalent in the spruce stand was 428.4 m3sk using the app and 319.8 m3sk using analog methods. When analyzing the results using R, the P-value showed that the results from the oak measurements was not significantly different. However, in the analysis of the spruce measurements it showed that the P-value was significantly different from the digital measurements.