Comparison of different approaches to estimate bark volume of industrial wood at disc and log scale

Within the wood supply chain, the measurement of roundwood plays a key role due to its high economic impact. While wood industry mainly processes the solid wood, the bark mostly remains as an industrial by-product. In Central Europe, it is common that the wood is sold over bark but that the price is calculated on a timber volume under bark. However, logs are often measured as stacks and, thus, the volume includes not only the solid wood content but also the bark portion. Mostly, the deduction factors used to estimate the solid wood content are based on bark thickness. The aim of this study was to compare the estimation of bark volume from scaling formulae with the real bark volume, obtained by xylometric technique. Moreover, the measurements were performed using logs under practice conditions and using discs under laboratory conditions. The mean bark volume was 6.9 dm³ and 26.4 cm³ for the Norway spruce logs and the Scots pine discs respectively. Whereas the results showed good performances regarding the root mean square error, the coefficient of determination (R²) and the mean absolute error for the volume estimation of the total volume of discs and logs (over bark), the performances were much lower for the bark volume estimations only.