Spatio-temporal Analysis of Harvest and Transport operations of the Forest-based Supply Chain: A Case Study from Styria, Austria

The Forest-based Supply Chain consists of a temporal sequence of activities from the forest to the customer that transform the raw material – i.e. wood – to marketable forest-based products (e.g. D’Amours et al. 2008). The activities within this specific supply chain are performed by different stakeholders, like forest owners, harvesting enterprises, haulage companies or forest industry in general. These actors are connected by material, monetary and information flows. The objective of this poster to draw from the methodologies developed in Transport Geography and spatio-temporal analysis and to apply them in the context of the Forest-based Supply Chain. In particular we evaluate transportation related data of the Forest-based Supply Chain collected from January 2015 until December 2016 in the province of Styria, Austria. The data were provided by the Holzcluster Steiermark GmbH – a non-profit organisation to facilitate and promote innovations in the forestry sector in Styria. A total of 49811 transportation operations were registered during a two-year observation period. The analysis, carried out using the R software environment. We divided our analysis into logging related analysis, transportation related analysis, as well as an analysis regarding wood flow. For the analysis we take quantitative and categorical variables into account. Quantitative variables include – among others – amount of wood harvested, distance between lumber yard and respective logging sites, and spatial density of logging operations. Categorical variables refer to the tree species and the type of processing. Variables are either evaluated by the administrative area, by corresponding location (logging site or lumber yard), or by creating a heat map. Additionally, different time frames are considered for the temporal analysis. The results, primarily consisting of thematic maps, reveal specific patterns related to harvesting, delivery and flow of wood. Harvesting related hot spots are mainly located in the outermost region of the Styrian Alps, which covers the hilly area north of the city of Graz, the Mur Valley, as well as the highlands bordering Carinthia. The largest lumber yard – measured by the amount of received timber – is situated in Leoben, which also constitutes the center of one of the aforementioned logging hot spots. Further noticeable timber industry is located in Graz and Wolfsberg. Large lumber yards (by amount of received timber) are associated with a large mean distance to respective logging sites. The results also suggest a negative correlation between the density of lumber yards and the yard size.