Standing tree assessment for the maintenance of historic wooden buildings: a case study of a World Heritage site in China

doi:10.3832/ifor0753-006

Historic wooden buildings are a symbol of China’s “culture of wood” and require extraction of forest resources for their renovation. In the 21^st century, natural resources are limited globally, and sustainable solutions are needed. In this study, we established a new method to connect building and forest sites for efficient utilization of limited forest resources for the renovation of historic buildings. We obtained measurements of large wooden components from Shenyang Imperial Palace. We also performed morphometric analyses on 47 thinned, old-growth larch trees to determine the relative taper curve, and selected 108 standing trees for simulation of the tree-height curve in the Mt. Changbai area, Jinlin Province, Northeast China. On the basis of forest metrology, we established an upper tree prediction method. By measuring the diameter at breast height (DBH) alone, we could compare size information (e.g., diameter, length) for standing trees and wooden building components. This method was then applied to estimate the required DBH class of standing trees for the renovation of Shenyang Imperial Palace.

Keywords

Sustainable Renovation, Relative Taper Curve, Tree Height Curve, Standing Tree Assessment, Historic Wooden Buildings

Authors’ address

(1)

Graduate School of Frontier Science, the University of Tokyo, 5-1-5 Kashiwanoha, Kashiwa, 277-8563 Chiba (Japan)

Corresponding author

W Yin
maximusinjapan@gmail.com

Citation

Yin W, Yamamoto H (2013). Standing tree assessment for the maintenance of historic wooden buildings: a case study of a World Heritage site in China. iForest 6: 169-174. - doi: 10.3832/ifor0753-006

Academic Editor

Marco Borghetti

Paper history

Received: Aug 29, 2012
Accepted: Mar 07, 2013

First online: May 08, 2013
Publication Date: Aug 01, 2013
Publication Time: 2.07 months

Open Access

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

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