Harvesting, Processing and Management of Specialty Forest Products and Biomass
A special issue of Forests (ISSN 1999-4907). This special issue belongs to the section "Forest Operations and Engineering".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 April 2026 | Viewed by 90
Special Issue Editors
Interests: intelligent equipment; harvesting and processing technology; high-value utilization technology of biomass; application of AI in bioenergy systems
Interests: automation and intelligence of forestry equipment; human engineering; forest environmental information monitoring
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
This Special Issue welcomes contributions on technological innovations across the entire value chain of specialty forest products and forest grass resources, including, but not limited to, the following areas:
1. Harvesting and Processing of Specialty Forest Products:
- Equipment and system development for specialty forest product harvesting and processing (e.g., Walnut, Lycium barbarum, Blueberry, Soapberry, Grape, Camellia fruit, Torreya).
- Quality detection and production forecasting of specialty forest products, alongside quality assessment of forest biomass-derived materials.
- Autonomous navigation, obstacle avoidance, target identification, and positioning technologies for complex orchard environments.
- Three-dimensional reconstruction and measurement for forestry environment, intelligent pruning, and other automated management tasks.
2. High-Value Utilization of Agricultural and Forestry Biomass:
- Efficient utilization technologies and equipment for forest and grass biomass.
- Energy conversion through compression moulding, gasification, liquefaction, and pretreatment (e.g. torrefaction, pyrolysis, steam explosion, dry explosion, etc.).
- Advanced processing technologies, from the fabrication of novel materials to the green extraction and value-added utilization of bioactive compounds.
3. Intelligent Forestry Operations:
- Route planning and operation management.
- Monitoring of operations, perception, and decision-making systems for forestry machinery.
- Digital twin and AI applications for forestry optimization.
4. Sustainability Assessment and System Optimization:
- Life cycle assessment of harvesting and processing technologies.
- Techno-economic analysis of integrated production systems.
- Ecological impact and sustainable management strategies.
Dr. Xiaopeng Bai
Prof. Dr. Wenbin Li
Dr. Ruifang Dong
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Forests is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- harvesting and processing
- specialty forest fruits
- biomass and bioenergy
- forestry operations
- sustainability assessment
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