EUBCE 2024 - Katharina WENDEL - Can Wood Chip Residues be Used For Nutrient Recycling? An Evaluation of Element Contents in Needle Samples to Develop New Approaches for Nutrient Recycling

Can Wood Chip Residues be Used For Nutrient Recycling? An Evaluation of Element Contents in Needle Samples to Develop New Approaches for Nutrient Recycling

Short Introductive summary

In recent years, a large amount of low-quality wood chips had to be supplied from forests in Bavaria due to bark beetle events. To meet the strict quality criteria of small- scale wood chip heating systems, technical processing is often necessary. During this process, residues which contain large shares of relevant nutrients for forest growth are produced, but mostly used in composting plants or are combusted in bigger power plants. To reduce the extraction of nutrients contained in the residues our current research project “Rest-Use” examines ways to recycle nutrients using wood chip processing residues as a “natural fertilizer”. Therefore, needle and soil samples were collected from two forest sites over three growing seasons, to investigate a possible melioration effect. Evaluations of needle masses as indicators for overall tree vitality and analytic results on element contents of needles will be presented at the conference.

K. Wendel, Bavarian State Institute of Forestry, Freising, GERMANY
M. Riebler, Bavarian State Institute of Forestry, Freising, GERMANY
E. Dietz, Bavarian State Institute of Forestry, Freising, GERMANY
H. Borchert, Bavarian State Institute of Forestry, Freising, GERMANY