A Geoprocessing Tool for the Calculation of Primary Wood Transportation Distance

Abstract

Knowledge about wood transportation distances is essential for sustainable forest management and related decision making in forest protection against fire or flood events. In this context, we developed the geoprocessing tool TraDis to allow for the calculation of two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) distance between a forest stand and the nearest forest road (i.e., pre-skidding distance) and the distance between this road and the nearest hauling place (i.e., skidding distance). The first aim of this study is to present the workflow for the calculation of the primary wood transportation distance using the TraDis tool. A detailed description, flowchart, and scheme are provided for these purposes. The second aim is to present the applicability of this workflow through a case study. The study area included 391 ha of forest stands, 58 km of forest roads, and 18 hauling places, and the transportation distances were calculated for various target objects, such as 366 forest stands, 10,341 square cells, 7220 hexagon cells, and 83,120 tree crowns. The results show that, while there is the ability to calculate the 2D distances for six forests, eight cells, and three crowns in one second, the calculation time for 3D distances is 1.6 times longer. Moreover, the pre-skidding distance and skidding distance at the 3D level were 3.6% and 0.9% greater than these distances at the 2D level, respectively.