Availability of resources in the Swiss forest

In order to ensure efficient and modern forest management, an infrastructure that meets today's requirements is indispensable. The project described here has two main objectives. The first aims to use data from the Swiss National Forest Inventory (NFI) to calculate the best, technically feasible and most cost-saving logging method for each NFI sample plot in the forest. The results of these calculations will be compared with the results of the existing NFI surveys. Since the existing NFI survey assesses the actual timber harvesting method used and not the technically optimal one, the existing need for improvement can be evaluated.
The second main goal of the project is to develop a spatially explicit, wall-to-wall product. This product represents the most important timber harvesting methods and will cover the entire Swiss forest. Evaluations of the forest roads surveyed by the NFI, which are available as a topological network, are decisive for this part of the project. Since the timber transport within and the timber removal from the forest are included in the evaluation, network analyses are necessary. This part of the project allows an explicit spatial evaluation of the expansion requirements for the forest road network and the economic efficiency.