Climate change and current forest damage pose considerable challenges for the forestry and wood cluster. At the same time, new potentials for the raw material wood arise in the context of the transformation towards a modern, resource-efficient and climate-neutral economy. Under the motto "NRW - Making more out of wood" , the partners will present new and resource-efficient uses for the raw material wood at the joint stand of Wald und Holz NRW (Forrest and Wood NRW).

As part of the thematic focus "Potentials of hardwood for timber construction of the future", the Center for Forest and Timber Management of Wald und Holz NRW will be showing the possible uses of the birch tree species in bonded and load-bearing timber construction products. This also includes silvicultural recommendations and maintenance concepts for the production of sawable birch logs in the reforestation of calamity areas. The variety of hardwood building products available on the market is increasing. For example, the "FlexiMoH" project for the development of flexible modular timber construction systems using BauBuche and the high-performance supporting structure for the new airship hangar at Essen/Mühlheim Airport, which is made of cross laminated timber components, beech dowels and laminated veneer panels, will be presented at the NRW joint stand. The aforementioned hardwood applications can be viewed using demonstrators and models.

Under the motto "Forest Bioeconomy in Action", the European Forest Institute (EFI) will present the cooperation of European regions as well as innovations and projects for a circular forest and wood-based bioeconomy. Here, too, wood use in construction is a particular focus.

The possible uses of spruce dry stands that have been dead for some time and the storage of large quantities of calamity wood after major damage events caused by drought and bark beetle infestations are the subject of the course on the NUKAFI research project under the EXPO roof. On the basis of calamity wood dry storage facilities and the live demonstration of the cutting of sample logs, the material utilization potentials depending on the time of dying of the drought stands, the influencing variables on the log quality as well as possible risks during industrial cutting will be presented. Another focus of the course will be the wood technology properties of wood construction products and wood-based materials made from calamity woods. The use of spruce calamity wood in building products will be shown, among other things, in the context of the demonstrator for the Tiny House of a start-up company from NRW.

Further topics of the NRW joint stand are the networking of planning, timber harvesting and logistics on the basis of digital twins within the framework of the joint project "Smart Forestry". Via situation-specific, freely configurable value creation networks, it enables communication of all actors "at eye level" in the control, evaluation and optimization of the timber harvesting process as well as its integration in upstream and downstream process stages.

The focus of the joint project "Intelliway" is on sensor-based monitoring of the condition of the forest road network and the planning of maintenance measures. The sensor data are collected automatically when the paths are used. Machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) methods are used to analyze the sensor data, detect existing trail damage and identify damage classes for individual trail sections.

Improved and sustainable production processes can significantly increase value creation and competitiveness in wood processing companies. At the joint stand, the Effizienz-Agentur NRW (Efficiency Agency) will be available to answer all questions on the implementation and promotion of measures to increase resource efficiency in the timber industry.

Wald und Holz NRW and the German Forestry Council (DFWR) cordially invite visitors to LIGNA 2023 to attend the joint meeting evening with NRW Forestry Minister Silke Gorißen and DFWR President Georg Schirmbeck on May 16 from 6:00 p.m. in Pavilion P35 under the EXPO roof.