Considerations on uncertainties and inconsistencies in the dendrometric terminology

• Main Authors: De_Mas G, Hellrigl B
• Format: Article
• Language: Italian
• Published: Italian Society of Silviculture and Forest Ecology (SISEF) 2014-06-01
• Series: Forest@
• Subjects: Stem Volume; Derbholz; Cormometric Volume
• Online Access: http://www.sisef.it/forest@/contents/?id=efor1208-011
• ISSN: 0000-0000; 1824-0119

In the italian forestry literature, the adjective “cormometric” combined with the noun volume or its equivalent, is used with three different meanings which are respectively linked to the stem, to the trunk or large timber. To find the origins and also the reasons for these different meanings of the term, we need to go back in history. The first definition is by Alfonso Di Berenger first director of the Vallombrosa Forest, the first seat of higher Forestry education in Italy between 1869 and 1951. He defined cormometric the volume of the “legname sociale” (industrial timber), or the trunk. Follows the definition of Vittorio Perona that, in the wake of the German concept of Derbholz, considers cormometric volume as including also portions of branches above seven centimeters. Giuseppe Di Tella, Professor of forest mensurations and forest management in Florence between 1916 and 1937 is the author of a large general volume table for fir where the cormometric volume is defined as the “stem including the top”, but also, following the doctrine, as a measure expressing the volume of the part of the stem that can provide wood for building or industry. Subsequently, with the definitions of the Professors Generoso Patrone and Guglielmo Giordano confirming the doctrinal meaning of Di Tella, the sense of the term remains unchanged. In 1986 Hellrigl called cormometric mass, the aboveground woody tree mass limited to trunk and limbs to be determined; however, this definition did not find any application. Alternative definitions by Roberto Del Favero and Orazio La Marca consider cormometric volume including top and cormometric volume excluding top. In the forest literature, instead, there were more changes in 2007, when the Forestry Research Portal published a notation regarding cubing of forest stands, stating “in the cubing of forest stands, woody volume estimated for conifers is, in general, cormometric (i.e., volume of the stem including bark)” which gave rise to the present note. Alongside, and again in connection with the meaning of the term cormometric, certain combinations of terminology reported in two multilingual glossaries of IUFRO are highlighted.