The box's owner had been told the wood came from the propeller of the Fokker triplane flown by Baron von Richthofen, the Red Baron, and shot down in France on 14 April 1918. It was immediately clear that the wood came from different sources. The War Memorial samples were laminated from a light and a darker wood and the box from two woods of similar colour and texture. A computer - based harvest plan mapping system developed over the past 18 months by the Division of Forestry and State Forests of NSW is ready for operational use. An important part of the collaboration with State Forests has been field testing the system in a range of New South Wales hardwood forests.
Research aimed at further automating the mapping system is now under way.
The GIS technology is capable of identifying those areas', McCormack says. These trails are used by the harvesting machinery to bring logs to the roadside, and can have adverse environmental impacts if poorly sited. Poor location can also adversely affect the performance of the logging machines. Studies of environmental and economic impacts of track location now under way will help improve the planning program. Our goal is to link the research outcomes into the new planning format', McCormack says.