In the last years, there has been a growing need to improve forest-wood chain concerning all three pillars of sustainability (economic, environmental, and social). Using electronic systems, in particular GIS, GNSS, and various kinds of sensors related to forest harvesting, is clearly one of the most powerful instruments to reach this aim. The contribution of these tools to forest operation is wide and various. One of the most important application was integrating ICT and GPS/GNSS on-board systems on modern forest machines. This allowed one to ensure multiple benefits to forest operation field. On the one hand, electronic systems, and particularly GIS, could be used to improve forest harvesting with a previous planning of the skid trails network, in order to minimize utilization impacts and risks for operators, ensuring at the same time high work productivity. Moreover, GIS developed files could also be implemented in modern forest machine GPS/GNSS systems, helping forest machines operators to move only along a designed skid trails network or making it possible to avoid restricted access areas. On the other hand, modern forest machines could be equipped with complex and accurate sensors that are able to determine, register, and share information about wood biomass quantity and quality and even undertake economic evaluation of stumpage value. Finally, the input and output of these systems and sensors could be implemented in a decision support system (DSS) ensuring the best silvicultural and operative alternative from a sustainable forest management point of view. A detailed review of the contribution of electronics in the development of forest operations is provided here.

Precision forestry is a useful technique to help forest stakeholders with proper sustainable forest management. Modern sensors and technologies, with special reference to the sustainability of forest operations, can be applied on a variety of levels, including the monitoring of forest activities regarding the three pillars (economy, environment, and society). In this review, we summarised the current level of knowledge regarding the use of precision forestry techniques for monitoring forest operations. We concentrated on recent data from the last five years (2019–2023). We demonstrated how an Industry 4.0 strategy for remote and proximal monitoring of working performance can be effective when using CAN-bus and StanForD data collected by modern forest machines. The same information can be effectively used to create maps of soil trafficability and to evaluate the patterns of skid tracks or strip roads built as a result of forest intervention. Similar information can be gathered in the case of small-scale forestry by using GNSS-RF (Global Navigation Satellite Systems—Radio Frequency) or even monitoring systems based on smartwatches or smartphones. LiDAR and Structure for Motion (SfM) photogrammetry are both useful tools for tracking soil rutting and disturbances caused by the passage of forest machinery. SfM offers denser point clouds and a more approachable method, whereas laser scanning can be considerably faster but needs a more experienced operator and better data-processing skills. Finally, in terms of the social component of sustainability, the use of location sharing technologies is strongly advised, based for instance on GNSS—RF to monitor the security of forest workers as they operate.

Biomass occupies a very important place among renewable energy sources, and the residual biomass recovery chain represents a sector of fundamental importance. Our work focused on the production of pellets by pruning residues from two of the most important woody crops in Italy: hazelnut and olive groves. We found a higher value of bulk density for the hazelnut pellet (581.30 kg m⁻³ vs. 562.38 kg m⁻³) and a higher value of length for the olive pellet (16.66 mm vs. 10.47 mm). The percentages of durability were very similar (98%). The low heating value and ash content of hazelnut and olive were 17.21 MJ kg⁻¹ and 3.1%, and 16.83 MJ kg⁻¹ and 2.5%. A higher concentration of Cu, Pb, and Ni was observed in the hazelnut. The contrary was observed for the concentration of Zn. N content was 0.77% and 1.24% for the hazelnut and the olive, respectively. The concentration of S was 0.00% for both. The quality parameters that do not meet current standards could be improved by mixing these materials with different types of wood.

High-density biomass plantations have played a key role in the national energy landscape in Italy since the 1990s but, to date, an inversion of tendency and a significant reduction of cultivated areas has been noted. Despite this, the existing plantations have seen their coppicing rotation become significantly lengthened, resulting in large quantities of biomass per hectare. This study aimed to identify the best raw material suitable for pellet production using whole trees or stems without branches from poplar plantations at the end of the third, sixth and ninth year of age. All types of pellets made reach the requirements of class A1 for diameter, length, moisture content, ash melting point, lower heating value, as well as nitrogen (N), sulfur (S), and heavy metals. None of the theses satisfied the bulk density parameters while for ashes and mechanical durability, a great variability was observed according to the different raw materials used. An improvement in terms of heating value was observed by transforming the poplar wood chips refined into pellets. The pelletizing process using high density poplar plantation as a raw material highlights the possibility of obtaining a product that meets many of the quality standards required on the market. These aspects are closely related to the innovation carried out in the agro-forestry sector for effective energetic sustainability.

The delivery of biomass products from the production place to the point of final transformation is of fundamental importance within the constitution of energy chains based on biomass use as a renewable energy source. Transport can be one of the most economically expensive operations of the entire biomass energy production process, which limits choices in this sector, often inhibiting any expansive trends. A geographic identification, through remote sensing and photo-interpretation, of the different biomass sources was used to estimate the potential available biomass for energy in a small-scale supply chain. This study reports on the sustainability of transport costs calculated for different types of biomass sources available close a biomass power plant of a small-scale energy supply chain, located in central Italy. To calculate the transport cost referred to the identified areas we used the maximum travel time parameter. The proposed analysis allows us to highlight and visualize on the map the areas of the territory characterized by greater economic sustainability in terms of lower transport costs of residual agroforestry biomass from the collection point to the final point identified with the biomass power plant. The higher transport cost was around €40 Mg⁻¹, compared to the lowest of €12 Mg⁻¹.

The forest biomass, as a renewable energy source, can significantly contribute to the progressive replacement of fossil fuels in energy production, with a positive final balance in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. One of the different sources of woody biomass supply is represented by short rotation coppices (SRC) plantations, currently present in various European countries for a total of about fifty thousand hectares. In Italy, part of the SRC surface has been converted into other more profitable crops, both the low levels reached by the woodchips market price and the scarce availability of specific public incentives. In this study, the authors expose the results of the models for evaluating work time, productivity, and costs of the felling operation on SRC poplar plantations with 8- and 11-year-old trees. The aim is to evaluate the economic sustainability in the use of advanced mechanization on these plantations. The machine was a crawler excavator equipped with a shear head. In the 11-year-old plantation, the productivity estimation model returned a range of 1.09–18.93 Mg h⁻¹ (average 5.56 ± 3.88 SD) when the weight variation of the trees was 20–491 kgw (average 100.41 ± 87.48 SD). In the 8-year-old poplar, the range was 1.02–11.60 Mg h⁻¹ (average 3.80 ± 1.71 SD), for weight variation of 17–137 kgw (average 50.57 ± 18.82 SD). The consequent variation in unit cost was EUR 2.82–51.63 Mg⁻¹ and EUR 4.05–49.65 Mg⁻¹, corresponding to EUR 1252.17–3463.78 ha⁻¹ and EUR 922.49–2545.11 ha⁻¹ for 11- and 8-year-old trees, respectively.