Future Timber Use with Regional Resources

The planned conversion of pure pine stands, which currently account for around 70 per cent of Brandenburg’s forests, into mixed woodland that is more resilient to damage will ensure that pine timber yields remain high over the next 20 to 30 years. At present, around 75 per cent of the timber harvested annually in Brandenburg and Berlin is used by the local wood-based materials industry. However, to ensure the long-term use of timber, and the associated long-term sequestration of the carbon contained in the material, it is vital to further develop regional value chains, particularly for solid wood in timber construction.

As part of the sub-project Concepts for Future Timber Use with a View to Regional Resource Provision, HNEE, in cooperation with the Max Planck Institute for Colloids and Interfaces, will investigate trees from the Forest Real-World Laboratory according to their location, examining their material properties as well as their knot characteristics, fibre orientation, density, annual ring width, proportions of earlywood, latewood and compression wood, and cellulose fibril angles. These characteristics play a central role in mechanical properties as well as in swelling and shrinkage behaviour. The model developed through this research will make it possible to predict the expected material properties of harvested round timber, thereby enabling a targeted, application-specific supply of the required timber qualities directly from the forest in the future.

The project forms part of the overall initiative: ADAPT-Wald-Holz – ADAPTive Forest Resource Management for a sustainable timber industry in the Brandenburg-Berlin region

Project leader: 

July 2023 to September 2025 Prof. Dr.-Ing. Alexander Pfriem

October 2025 to October 2026 Prof. Dr Tobias Cremer