Wood Resource Monitoring

Background and Objective

In 1999, a research project entitled "Locations of the Timber Industry" was initiated by timber market participants, under the direction of Prof. Udo Mantau. The project is still being continued today as "Wood Resource Monitoring". The aim is to regularly record the production and the production capacities of the wood industry (i.e. saw mills, panel mills, pulp mills) and their raw material demand as well as the energetic use of wood (i.e. in private households and biomass combustion plants). This is necessary because there are sometimes considerable gaps in the available statistics. From 2022, the Thünen Institute of Forestry has taken over the leadership of the project as a new permanent task. For this purpose, we will build on the work, which was done at the University of Hamburg under Prof. Udo Mantau, INFRO and the Thünen Institute.

Target Group

Politics, science, associations

Approach

The focus of the Wood Resource Monitoring is on markets that are not or only insufficiently covered by statistics (e.g. the wood energy market, including private households). However, there is also a need for supplementary information in markets that are covered by official statistics - for example, due to an unrecorded raw material mix or under-recording of a sector: in the sawmill industry, for example, only sawmills with ten or more employees are recorded. In the Wood Resource Monitoring, empirical surveys of individual use-sectors of wood are therefore carried out. The data obtained form the basis for further analyses. Depending on the sector, both sample surveys and full surveys are carried out. In some cases, literature studies or association data is being used to complement the big picture.

Our Research Questions

• What kind of wood resources and quantities are used in the relevant sectors in Germany?
• How does the use of wood change over time?
• How does the structure of the sectors change over time (e.g. company sizes)?

Links and Downloads

• www.thuenen.de/en/thuenen-topics/renewable-resources/bioeconomy/wood-resource-monitoring
• Systemic wood resource monitoring (Predecessor project page/duration > 2022)
• Resource monitoring for wood (Predecessor project page/duration > 2018)