Sustainable Forest Operations: Technology, Management, and Challenges
A special issue of Forests (ISSN 1999-4907). This special issue belongs to the section "Forest Operations and Engineering".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 28 February 2026 | Viewed by 27
Special Issue Editors
Interests: forest operation; contact surface area; soil disturbance; ground pressure; rut formation; rubber track
Interests: forest operations (productivity, environmental impacts, ergonomics); forest utilization (timber measurement and bark characteristics)
Interests: sustainable forest operations; reduced-impact logging; precision forest harvesting
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Worldwide forest management concepts are rapidly changing toward diverse forest structures with higher shares of deciduous tree species and increased societal awareness—both developments that strongly affect forest operations with common harvesting technology. In parallel, we face challenges in terms of the mechanization of forest work and recruiting young workers to be educated in forestry, forest machinery, and digital tools.
We invite you to present and discuss your valuable research on forest operations in order to meet these challenges. We offer room for future ideas in forest technology and process management to anchor forest operations as a reliable and innovative partner within bioeconomy supply chains and to raise the acceptance of forest operations in society.
This Special Issue aims to discuss answers and elaborate on innovative developments in forest operations, looking at both machine engineering and human-centered process management supported by digitalization.
In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome, and research areas may include, but are not limited to, the following topics:
- Technology developments in forest machinery;
- Digitalization to support decision-making;
- Ergonomics for the forest worker;
- Process management and machine communication along the supply chain utilizing standardization and digitalization;
- The contribution of harvesting to forest biodiversity;
- Increasing the yield and efficiency of harvesting deciduous tree species through innovative technology or the valorization of lesser-used assortments;
- Forest operations on sensitive soils;
- Educational concepts for forest workers, machine operators, and forest operations managers;
- Robotization in forestry;
- Measuring systems for monitoring work;
- Forest machine performance.
We look forward to receiving your valuable contributions.
Dr. Benjamin Engler
Dr. Ferréol Berendt
Dr. Francesco Latterini
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 technology
- digitalization
- forest work science
- labor
- tree planting
- timber supply chain
- forest ergonomics
- quality optimization
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