Hurricane and tornado events cause significant damage to high-value timber in the United States each year. Forest managers and landowners are keenly interested in finding solutions to salvage and repurpose these downed timbers before they cause pest infestations and fire outbreaks, completely losing their value or increasing processing costs. To better understand the wood quality of the downed timber, we used acoustic waves techniques as a nondestructive testing approach to assess the wood degradation rate of downed trees and determine the extent of fracture and voids in the damaged regions. We periodically monitored the acoustic velocity of the downed trees for 12 consecutive months using a time of flight (TOF) acoustic method. Acoustic measurements were conducted using three different techniques—longitudinal, transverse, and off-set methods. Wood density, age, and the diameter at breast height (dbh) class measurement for southern timber (chip-n-saw for dbh 8″–11″ and sawtimber with dbh 12″ and up) were used as the predictive parameters of the downed trees. The results indicated positive relationships between dbh class, stand age, and acoustic velocity measurement (R2 > 65%). The TOF acoustic velocity was indicated to potentially separate higher-stiffness timber from lower-stiffness timber in a hurricane event for structural or non-structural applications. The regression coefficient from the repeated measurements indicated that both age and diameter class strongly impacted the acoustic properties of the downed trees (p-value ≤ 0.001). The sawtimber dbh class recorded a higher acoustic velocity compared to the chip-n-saw type. Fracture, voids, and massive decay in downed trees were detected beyond the visible inspection, features that often are identified by loggers in lower quality wood; however, TOF showed a weak response in picking up incremental deterioration due to changes in specific environmental factors that affected acoustic readings. This study showed that acoustic wave methods could potentially be used as a field evaluation tool for assessing the quality of downed trees.

Near-infrared reflectance (NIR) spectroscopy was used to determine correlations between acoustic velocity and stiffness properties of downed pine trees in the southern coastal plains of the United States. Three acoustic measurement methods (longitudinal, transverse, and offset) were used. From the measurement of the acoustics, the time of flight (TOF) was determined from the downed trees. Increment core samples were obtained from each thirty downed pine trees in the study. NIR spectra were obtained using a fiber probe on the radial surface of each core to rapidly correlate the speed of sound, estimate the strength properties of the downed trees, and the TOF acoustic assessments. The NIR prediction was very good for the transverse and offset methods. The predictability diagnostic was above an R2 of 0.70 for both offset measurements for the transverse methods for the acoustic velocity and dynamic modulus of elasticity (MOE). The longitudinal measurement exhibited the weakest model (R2 < 0.65) for both the acoustic velocity and the MOE with the highest standard error of prediction between 3.0 (ELVLSWV) and 0.31 (VLSWV) for the three measurement types. All the standard errors of calibration were below 1% except in ELVOSWV, which was ∼2%. The dry density measured from the increment cores had a moderate correlation (R2 ∼ 60%), compared with the lower correlation (R2 ∼ 50%) by the green density in the multiple linear regression output. The results of the acoustic model indicated that NIR spectroscopy has the potential to predict the acoustic velocity and corresponding stiffness of downed trees.