As consequence of the impact of the 2019/2020 fires in Australia this project was designed to the develop guidelines for fire salvage and burnt log storage and processing, for pine and eucalypt plantation-grown.
Fires regularly affect plantation forest areas in Australia and every year various locations need to deal with the aftermath. Salvage of usable log products from burnt forest will always be a prime objective for the forest grower. In the case of fires that have a significant impact on future resource availability, effective salvage will also be a strong objective for processors.
The full report, ‘Guidelines for salvage harvest, storage and processing of plantation-grown logs affected by fire’, brings together a large amount of relevant Australian and international information and knowledge contributed by a number of foresters and mill personnel associated with previous major fire activities. It includes an analysis of available data, identification of areas of future research requirements and recommendations for the development of an integrated fire management and response plan to inform both growers and processors.
The information has been collated, analysed and summarised into a single document to act as a set of guidelines for both growers and processors to reference when dealing with future significant fire events.
While the major focus in the report is on plantation timber, many of the findings are also applicable to management and salvage associated with native forests.
There are a number of priority issues that need to be assessed in regard to how the industry responds to fire events within current forest estates. These can be summarised into four key areas:
- Industry impacts associated with scale and probability of future fires.
- Salvage planning processes.
- Salvage operational processes including storage/stockpiling efficacy.
- Management of production processes associated with the variable fibre quality issues (physical and biological) relating to salvaged and stockpiled log products.
View the executive summary via this link.
Project number: PRB502-1920
