Dear Colleagues,
Global competition and societal change are eliciting incremental changes in forest
management practices throughout temperate and boreal forest regions. Forest management
objectives and associated silvicultural inputs are increasingly focused on enhancing
end-product quality while providing a wider array of ecosystem services and maintaining or
increasing volumetric fibre yields. Realizing this aspirational trivariate goal is
partially dependent of the provision of enhanced in-forest operational intelligence and
associated decision-making capacities in relation to the production and management of wood
quality outcomes. Innovative research efforts continue to make consequential gains in
addressing these issues via the development of wood quality and fibre attribute prediction
models, in-forest non-destructive methods for estimating end-product potential, and crop
planning decision-support systems and associated software analogues for use in operational
forest management.
The journal Forests (mdpi), is embarking on an effort to document and advance these
innovations throughout the forest science and management communities. Specifically, the
upcoming Special Issue, entitled "Managing for Wood Quality: Analytics, Operational
Tools and Applied Solutions", will attempt to benchmark the state-of-knowledge and
highlight research efforts in this rapidly evolving area. Contributions that aim to (1)
quantify or model conceptual or empirical linkages between external tree morphology (e.g.,
crown structure) or internal fibre attributes (e.g., wood density, microfibial angle or
modulus of elasticity) and end-product potential, (2) advance in-forest non-destructive
methodologies for use in estimating internal wood quality attributes (e.g., acoustics), or
(3) develop and (or) demonstrate crop planning decision-support analogues for use in
managing wood quality outcomes (e.g., density management models), would all be within the
scope of this Special Issue. Furthermore, contributions that attempt to incorporate the
consequences of climate change on wood quality determinates or management decision-making
would be most welcomed.
If applicable, please consider contributing to this effort and note contributions should
be submitted by March 31st, 2021. Complete submission guidelines are available on the
Forests' web-site:
https://www.mdpi.com/journal/forests/special_issues/Wood_Quality_Tools_Apply.
Best Regards,
Peter Newton (peter.newton(a)canada.ca)
CC. Jason Cao (jason.cao(a)mdpi.com)