Free service reveals best ideas in European forestry to professionals – ’We wanted to find solutions’

17.2.2022 / Article
The new Rosewood 4.0 web portal brings forestry actors together into a Europe-wide network. Photo: Vilma Issakainen

Bioeconomy and replacing fossil raw materials are at the forefront in a new service Rosewood 4.0 for forest sector professionals, introducing the 260 best practices and ideas in Europe.

The new Rosewood 4.0 web portal brings forestry actors together into a Europe-wide network. The goal is to disseminate the best 260 forestry practices to professionals and decision-makers.

“There’ll be easy-to-find information and ideas for developing operations and activity,” promises Kari Mäkitalo, Senior Scientist at Natural Resources Institute Finland.

The practices were selected from among more than three hundred candidates. The project participants include 15 member states of the EU, plus Switzerland, Ukraine and Norway. Most of the practices presented on the Rosewood website make use of digital technology.

“The aim is to promote European bioeconomy and the diversified and sustainable use of wood, as well as to replace fossil-based raw materials with wood-based ones,” Mäkitalo explains.

Finnish Virtual Forest 2.0 application helps with land use planning and with guidance to forest owners.

The plan is to add new material to the portal in the future. Funded by the European Union, the Rosewood 4.0 (Horizon 2020) project was started two years ago to continue the earlier Rosewood project, which started the collecting of practices. The project also mapped the strengths and weaknesses of forest management in different countries, such as the challenges brought by climate change and the availability of trained employees.

“Our aim now is to find solutions to these challenges,” says Mäkitalo.

As examples of the ideas included in the service, Mäkitalo mentions new technologies in wood construction, transporting seedlings with drones, the automation and digitalization of sawmills and know-how related to training and education in the forest sector.

Finnish website Metsään.fi is included

One of the Finnish items included is Metsään.fi [Into the Forest], a website maintained by the Finnish Forest Centre. Free of charge, it provides forest owners and forest sector actors with information on forest holdings, links to service businesses, help with paperwork and much more.

“Participants from further south in Europe have shown great interest in the Metsään.fi platform. They want to know more about it and maybe develop similar services in their own countries,” Mäkitalo says.

The EU’s objective with the Rosewood 4.0 project is to create a forest sector network that also includes countries where forestry is less important than in Northern Europe. Mäkitalo says that the most input in the project comes from countries with plenty of forests in North and Central Europe.

Digiwood digitalizes sawmilling processes.
The Swedish Digiwood digitalizes sawmilling processes.

“Countries in East Central Europe, for example, have not progressed as far in all things, even if they may be ahead of Finland in some things. They will be assisted by countries with more forests,” Mäkitalo says.

“These countries also have areas where forestry is of local importance. We want forestry to gain more visibility than is perhaps afforded by national governments.”

On the Rosewood website, the practices are described in English and partly in the language of the originating country. The Finnish participants in the Rosewood 4.0 project are the Lapland University of Applied Sciences and Natural Resources Institute Finland.

Are you familiar with these emerging words related to forests and forestry? Pre-emptive felling, eco battery, forest dust…

Five picks of the bunch

  • Fovea: A German smartphone application that can measure, for example, the number of stems or solid cubic metres in a log pile, by making use of the latest scanning technology. It utilizes map data, helps with invoicing and supports logistics software.
  • Virtual Forest 2.0: Developed at the Lapland University of Applied Sciences, the Virtual Forest 2.0 application helps with land use planning and with guidance to forest owners. The application is based on the open OGIS geodata system and contains modelling of areas from all parts of Finland. It takes into account the variation in tree growth and growth sites in different areas. It also provides visual representations of the tree stock, topology, water bodies and felling sites, and data on tree growth.
  • FeltGIS: The Norwegian FeltGIS transmits digital data from the forestry machine operator up to the industrial facility. The data can be viewed on telephones and computers and in forestry machines regardless of brand.
  • Digiwood: The Swedish Digiwood digitalizes sawmilling processes. The aim is to create a system where the measuring data from the forest can be efficiently utilized during further processing. Digiwood makes use of 3D modelling and log X-rays from sawmills.
  • Forest Finland: The Forest Finland campaign provides information on the sustainability of forest use and on solutions based on forest use. The campaign, a joint effort by the Finnish forest sector, aims at attracting the interest of the general public. Still on-going, the campaign makes use of advertising on television, the radio, the Internet and in social media, as well as at various events.
Tero Karjalainen

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