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Mobile App for Eucalyptus bucking—Value Chain Optimization for Smallholders

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Abstract

Eucalyptus plantations are a notable source of income for smallholders and private landowners in Thailand. The main uses of eucalyptus are for energy purposes and as pulpwood, sawn timber, and veneer. Among private eucalyptus forest owners there is a need for decision support tools that can help in optimizing tree bucking, according to the available properties of the site and bucking patterns. The precise characterization of plantation properties is key to delivering appropriate timber assortment to markets and optimizing timber value. Our study has developed and tested dynamic and linear programming models for optimizing the tree bucking of eucalyptus trees. To achieve this, tree taper curves for use in volumetric models were defined for optimization. Our results indicate that both the tree spacing and the increment of diameter of breast height are significant factors when estimating profitability. The income would be significantly higher if bucking timber in different assortments were used, instead of the current approach of selling as bulk based on mass. For implementation, we created a free mobile application for android phones (EVO—eucalyptus value chain optimization) to utilize the study results at the grass root-level.

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(modified from Kivinen 2007)

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Funding

This work was financially supported by the Office of the Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation, and Thailand Science Research and Innovation through the Kasetsart University Reinventing University Program 2022.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Forestry, Department of Forest Engineering, Kasetsart University, Bangkok, Thailand

    Tomi Kaakkurivaara & Nopparat Kaakkurivaara

  2. Division of Forest and Forest Resources, Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research, Ås, Norway

    Heikki Korpunen

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  1. Tomi Kaakkurivaara
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  2. Heikki Korpunen
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  3. Nopparat Kaakkurivaara
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Correspondence to Nopparat Kaakkurivaara.

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Kaakkurivaara, T., Korpunen, H. & Kaakkurivaara, N. Mobile App for Eucalyptus bucking—Value Chain Optimization for Smallholders. Small-scale Forestry (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11842-024-09563-5

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