New Paper published on Forest Ecology and Management

New paper titled “Estimating merchantable and non-merchantable wood volume in slash walls using terrestrial and airborne LiDAR” is now published online in Forest Ecology and Management! This collaborative work, involving Cornell EEB, DNRE, and SUNY ESF, is led by our PhD student Nick Cranmer. The study investigates the woody volume of slash wall, an effective forest management practice to prevent deer herbivory and promote forest regeneration with terrestrial and airborne lidar systems (TLS and ALS). Key findings include: (1) TLS tends to underestimate total cross-sectional area due to omission of small stem cross-sections (diameter < 5.08 cm). (2) TLS-based wood volume estimates were similar across both short and tall slash walls in the study with an average volume of 21.34 m3/30 m for short slash walls and 21.50 m3/30 m for tall slash walls, corresponding to 16.9 t dry biomass /30 m and 17.0 t dry biomass /30 m respectively. (3) Average merchantable (diameter > 15.24 cm) and non-merchantable (diameter < 15.24 cm) timber fraction was 68.75 % and 31.35 % for short slash walls and 65.04 % and 34.96 % for tall slash walls. This study provides novel data and methodology to estimate the construction cost of slash walls which are critical for optimizing slash wall applications.