Sustainable forestry
The forest products industry in the U.S. is vast, diverse and strong. From traditional products such as construction lumber to paper and plywood, the industry is diversifying amidst strong interest from consumers and others about the sustainability of this sector.
Today and in recent years, the industry has migrated into many new areas that it traditionally did not play a significant role, including:
Energy – wood chips and pellets play a strong role in the generation of heat and cooling for buildings as well as electricity for the U.S. grid amidst the growing renewables sectors. The newest of those, bio-fuel made from wood, is a direct substitute for fossil fuels – full-scale commercial facilities for this fuel (bio-oil for heating, and green diesel and jet fuel for transportation);
Mass timber and, specifically, cross-laminated timber or CLT, is poised to revolutionize the mid-size (up to 18 stories) commercial building sector as large multilayer pre-manufactured all-wood panels cut the cost of construction time compared to traditional steel and concrete structures;
Useful chemicals, natural substitutes from those that traditionally have come from fossil fuels or mined sources, are now being produced as by-products of existing forest products manufacturing facilities such as pulp and paper mills;
Nanocellulose, using the micro-essence of wood materials, is starting to play a role in products such as concrete. Concrete, an essential construction product, is very climate un-friendly as the production of cement is very carbon intensive. Including 20 or 30% nanocellulose in concrete mixes can make the material more carbon-friendly while providing other material benefits.
Since 1992, certification systems have come into place to assure forests are being managed sustainably. The earth’s forest cover is about 30% of the world’s surface land area. These programs now cover over 10% of the world’s forests.
Carbon
Today, forests in the U.S. and elsewhere around the globe are being recognized as a very important natural climate change solution. As part of normal plant photosynthesis, trees take in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and, along with sunlight, water and nutrients from the soil, make carbohydrates (sugars) that it uses to grow and, thus, created wood. Maintaining forests as forests and not allowing forested land to be changed to a non-forest use, is the most important step we can take to maintain this natural climate change solution.
At the same time, in the recent decades, markets paying forest landowners to maintain their forest and keep them growing wood/carbon, have appeared. The buyers in the carbon markets are entities that want to offset their carbon footprint whether they are a manufacturer with a plant emitting greenhouse gases through its chimney, a trucking fleet releasing CO2 through the burning of fossil fuels or an airline doing the same, these entities can purchase forest carbon offsets. Its important to note that we can still harvest timber for the many important products made from wood and sell forest carbon offsets as long as the combination of the two doesn’t exceed the annual net growth in that forest.
More Safe and Efficient Harvesting Systems
Lastly, another major set of changes in the supply chain for timber products that we have seen in the last 40 years is the mechanization of harvesting timber in our forests. In the distant past trees were harvested using manual cross-cut saws and axes and brought to market mostly in the winter by horses and oxen pulling sleds over frozen ground or in carts in warmer regions. Chainsaws and tractors revolutionized cutting of trees in the late 1940s and 1950s. While some chainsaw harvesting still occurs in the U.S. and worldwide because chainsaws are relative inexpensive, the vast majority of timber harvesting in the U.S. and world is done with fully mechanized systems where large machines – feller bunchers or cut-to-length processors – sever the tree with giant blades cutting and organizing the trees and products while the operator is inside a protected cab. Timber materials are then moved from the woods by large skidders that lift and drag the trees or by forwarders that take products already sawed into lengths in the woods by cut-to-length processor machines and drive them out as a large truck with huge tires. Large trucks transport products to market.
The two major benefits of these new harvesting systems are safety and productivity. The new systems, where workers do not even stand on the ground during harvesting, or moving and processing products, are much more safe than with people using chainsaws. Secondly, these new systems are much more productive than the manual systems with chainsaws. The down side is that they are expensive but that is offset through the increased productivity and the careful work done in the woods to protect the remaining forest as trees are harvested.
Sustainability in Managing Forests
The special nature of all of this, of course, is that timber and wood-derived products come from a renewable resource – trees and forests. The most basic metric to understand the sustainability of trees and forests is to know whether the forests of an area of land contain more wood and, thus, carbon, over time. The area of forests in the U.S. has remained relatively steady over the last 50 years. More importantly, the amount of wood (and, as a result carbon since wood is at least 50% carbon) has steadily increased since the USDA Forest Service started keeping close track of this in the 1950s.Since the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992, in-depth third-party certification systems have come into place in the U.S. and internationally to assure forests are being managed sustainably. The earth’s forest cover is about 30% of the world’s surface land area. These voluntary private programs now cover over 10% of the world’s forests. The two worldwide forest certification systems are the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) and the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). In the U.S., PEFC is embodied in the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) for large landowners and the American Tree Farm System for small family forest owners.
The forest products and energy sectors are strong and diverse and will continue to provide humans with sustainable, renewable products while maintaining our important forest resources worldwide.
