Information about the concerted action
STORM DAMAGED FORESTS:
efficient and safe harvesting and log conservation methods

Several European countries were affected by the storms in December 1999. Forests were strongly damaged in Denmark, Sweden, France, Germany, Austria and Switzerland and the wind-fallen trees represented in some regions several times the average annual harvested volume.
These damages were estimated in Europe at the never seen level of about 180 million m3 to be compared to the 250 million m3 harvested each year in the European Union.
For economic and ecological reasons like the prevention of phytosanitary risks and fire, it is very important to harvest without delay the wind-fallen or broken trees. This is also the only way to save the quality of that wood from degradation and to keep it in good conservation conditions for the wood industry supply during the coming years.

But these harvesting and logging operations must be conducted in a very short time (before the hot season : spring and summer) so even the non directly affected European countries has contributed by sending professional manpower and equipment. They could also participate by their former experience of log conservation methods which includes the effects on wood quality for timber or paper use.
In fact, this situation gave us the opportunity to a lot of local experiments on safe and efficient harvesting methods, respectful of the environment, in storm damaged forests, and on new log conservation methods concerning a great number of different species and conditions in Europe.
As learnt from the statistics, such storms will occur at a lower level more or less every five to ten years somewhere in Europe. It is important to take benefit of all the experiments that will be conducted on harvesting and log conservation in storm damaged forests to be ready to react more quickly when a new storm will occur.

Such a concerted action appeared to be the appropriate frame for building a European network that has gathered and summarised the different experiments and their results (successful or not) in a practical technical guide for forest- and wood industry managers.
This allows for learning from these results and sharing of knowledge between the different European countries so that time, money and lives can be saved for the next time.
The main objective of this project is to contribute to answer the first two questions adressed to foresters and wood industry managers facing storm damaged forests:

How to harvest the wind fallen or broken trees in safe economic and ecological ways, to prevent fungus or insect diseases and fire risks and allow for forest restoration?

How to keep the wood quality to save the wood industry supply and the foresters' incomes through efficient log storage and conservation methods?

This objective has been achieved by the following actions:

Producing, via the exploitation of all relevant publications, patents or industrial experiences, a survey of the practical available methods and their conditions of use.
Identifying the main unsolved questions.
Making a list and following up the ongoing experiments in the different European countries affected by the December 1999 storms.
Suggesting additional experiments to cover as many species and conditions as possible.
Building harmonised procedures for homogeneous presentation of the results, to allow the comparison and valuation of the different methods; for harvesting, the harmonised procedure produced by the European concerted action AIR3.CT94.2097 (CA) will be used, with additions for damage description. This harmonised procedure will ensure that the results cover all the technical, economic, ecological and security aspects.
Writing a practical technical guide brought up-to-date from the initial survey with the followed-up and validated experiment results.
Contributing to the dissemination of the up-to-date available efficient and safe methods via this website, through a final technical seminar for both forest- and industrial users, scientists and forest services/administration, and the diffusion of the technical guide by each partner in its own country.

For further information, you may contact one of the project partners in your country