Estimated costs of forest harvesting of trees damaged by wind on March 5, 2015 in Tuscany Region

Abstract

During the night between the 4^th and the 5^th of March 2015, Tuscany Region was struck by a dominating northeastern windstorm that caused enormous damages in a large part of the territory in urban and forest areas. Within a monitoring plan carried out by LAMMA Consortium, in collaboration with the Italian Academy of Forest Sciences, the Italian National Forest Service and the University of Florence, a methodology was developed to estimate the costs for the extraction activities of the damaged wood. The specific aim was to determine which work planning strategies could beused to optimize the timber harvesting, in order to provide an economical sustainability of wood extraction. The extraction system to be applied in each area was selected by taking into account technical/technological constraints. Once identified the selection criteria for wood logging system over the forest damaged areas, the working time to complete all extraction activities was estimated on the basis of the GESAAF Department forest work time data base. In order to define the cost of wood extraction, information about unit costs was derived from the Regional Price List for interventions and forestry works. For a total area of 1,127 ha, with a volume of 331,860 cubic meters of damaged wood, a total cost of 9,793,185 € and an average cost of 32.60 € per cubic meter of extracted wood were estimated.