forests

- December 29, 2014, The Recorder

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"365","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"311","style":"width: 333px; height: 216px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","width":"480"}}]]Nearly 40,000 tons of forest residue from the Rim Fire area in Tuolumne County has been removed for use to generate biomass energy, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department.

Meanwhile, the USDA said it has made funds available to help California landowners conserve natural resources damaged or threatened as a result of wildfires during the past 18 months.

- by Richard Reese, December 1, 2014, Resilience

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"324","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"color: rgb(73, 73, 73); font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 20.671998977661133px; width: 333px; height: 151px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]Outside the entrance of the glorious Hall of Western History are the marble lions, colorful banners, and huge stone columns. Step inside, and the popular exhibits include ancient Egypt, classical Greece, the Roman Empire, the Renaissance, Gutenberg, Magellan, Columbus, Galileo, and so on. If we cut a hole in the fence, and sneak around to the rear of the building, we find the dumpsters, derelicts, mangy dogs, and environmental history.

The Darwin of environmental history was George Perkins Marsh, who published Man and Nature in 1864 (free download). Few educated people today have ever heard of this visionary. Inspired by Marsh, Walter Lowdermilk, of the Soil Conservation Service, grabbed his camera and visited the sites of old civilizations in 1938 and 1939. He created a provocative 44-page report, Conquest of the Land Through Seven Thousand Years (free download). The government distributed over a million copies of it.

- by John Cramer, December 2, 2014, Dartmouth College

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"322","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 333px; height: 250px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]Logging doesn't immediately jettison carbon stored in a forest's mineral soils into the atmosphere but triggers a gradual release that may contribute to climate change over decades, a Dartmouth College study finds.

The results are the first evidence of a regional trend of lower carbon pools in soils of harvested hardwood forests compared to mature or pristine hardwood forests. The findings appear in the journal Global Change Biology Bioenergy. A PDF of the study is available on request.

Despite scientists' growing appreciation for soil's role in the global carbon cycle, mineral soil carbon pools are largely understudied and previous studies have produced differing results about logging's impact. For example, the U.S. Forest Service assumes that all soil carbon pools do not change after timber harvesting.

/*-->*/ -By Emily Zucchino, October 28, 2014, Dogwood Alliance

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"308","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"480","style":"width: 160px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left; height: 160px;","title":"Photo: Dogwood Alliance","width":"480"}}]]Today’s biggest threat to Southern forests is the growing biomass industry. The wood pellet industry is expanding at a rate that is impossible for Southern forests to sustain. Our beautiful forests are being clear-cut, processed into pellets and then shipped to Europe to be burned for electricity.

We know that our forests aren’t fuel, and that’s why we’re sending an SOS to EU policymakers to Save Our Southern forests.

On November 13th, as the wood products industry meets in Chesapeake, VA to celebrate the destruction and export of our incredible forests, people from across the US are coming together for a National Day of Action to send an SOS to Save Our Southern forests. With 20 existing wood pellet facilities and 33 proposed, it’s crucial that we show EU policymakers that the biomass industry is bad for our environment, our communities and our economy. Join us in sending an SOS of more than 10,000 messages to EU policymakers.

Join us on November 13th to send an SOS to Save Our Southern forests.

PLEDGE TO TAKE ACTION NOW!

The increased demand for wood as a fuel source in the EU and particularly in the United Kingdom is driving the expansion of wood pellet manufacturing and export in the Southern US. We call on policymakers in the EU to hear our SOS and take action to stop the destruction of these forests.

The large-scale burning of wood pellets is not a solution to climate change or a feasible alternative to coal.

Mounting scientific research shows that burning wood pellets manufactured from trees will increase near-term carbon emissions and accelerate climate change. A recent report released by the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change confirms that all scenarios in which whole trees or coarse woody residuals are used for wood pellets produce a result that is not carbon beneficial.

Additionally, our living forests provide many benefits.

Standing forests are our best defense against climate change through gathering and storing carbon.

Forests provide our communities with clean air to breathe, water to drink, and natural protection from flooding and hurricanes. They are home to countless species of plants and animals found nowhere else on Earth. Cutting them down as a solution to the climate crisis is bad policy and makes no sense. We can no longer invest in forest destruction; we need to focus on forest conservation.

Protect our bottomland wetland forests!

Join us on November 13th to send an SOS to EU policymakers.

Help us reach our goal of 10,000 messages!

-  Rachel Brighton, October 10, 2014, The Chronicle Herald

[More evidence of biomass energy competing for limited wood source.]

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"302","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"271","style":"width: 333px; height: 188px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","title":"Photo: thechronicleherald.ca","width":"480"}}]]Opening up long-term access to western Crown lands will relieve some of the pressure that has been building in the forestry sector this year.

This week the province announced that 16 sawmills and manufacturers had been granted 10-year allocations on the former Bowater lands and other Crown land west of Highway 101.

Many sawmills had been crying out for this Crown access since late 2012, when the province acquired the assets of the defunct Bowater Mersey Paper Co.,including its vast tracts of timberlands in the southwest of the province.

This spring the province granted temporary access to these lands to 12 sawmills and two other players in the forestry industry: Louisiana-Pacific Canada Ltd., which produces hardboard siding in Lunenburg County, and Northern Pulp Nova Scotia Corp.

Emera Energy, which operates a biomass plant in Brooklyn that produces electricity for Nova Scotia Power Inc., was also allowed to harvest on Crown land this year, under a separate agreement with the province.

The new allocations secure access for mostly the same group of mills that gained the spring licences, but with a few left out and a few more added. Northern Pulp’s access to western Crown land has also been assured for the next decade.

Alongside these allocations, the province has a separate Crown land agreement with Port Hawkesbury Paper LP.

As well, Nova Scotia Power has become a significant buyer of biomass, through independent contractors, to feed its power plant in Point Tupper.

The allocations conclude a year in which there has been acute price competition for firewood and low-grade hardwood, spiked by expanding demand for biomass at Nova Scotia Power’s Point Tupper plant and, as some sawmills and contractors maintain, by Northern Pulp’s acquisition of hardwood pulpwood.

There has also been a logjam in getting wood out of the forest into the market, caused in part by a major contraction in the number of forestry contractors and truckers.

Some households felt the force of these market factors this year, when the price for firewood shot up after last year’s heavy winter. Some firewood suppliers told me their customers were hoarding wood for fear of a shortage, making the problem worse.

- by Kate Prengaman, October 29, 2014 Yakima Herald-Republic

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"300","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 264px; height: 264px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]Scientists are searching for the fuels of the future in high-tech laboratories around the world, but last week one research team debuted its new technology at a wood-chipping plant tucked in the forest outside Cle Elum.

That's because their technology runs on wood chips.

Roasting the wood, which might be otherwise worthless, at high temperatures without oxygen, creates a bio-oil similar to petroleum and a flammable gas that can be captured to run the burners. It also produces bio-char, a charcoal-like material that has applications in agriculture as a soil additive and in water filtration.

The state Department of Natural Resources hosted this demonstration because it's seeking solutions to Eastern Washington's biggest forest health problem: dense forests in need of thinning to reduce wildfire and disease risks, which is expensive work.

"When we are talking with landowners about how to improve their forest's health, (it) involves removing small trees and oftentimes that material doesn't have much of an economic value," said Chuck Hersey, a DNR forest health specialist who organized the event with a Utah-based company that developed the technology.

"This technology is one potential pathway for dealing with small, low-grade trees," Hersey said. "It's basically turning woody biomass into more dense, renewable energy products that have a higher value than just wood products."

- by George Wuerthner, September, 25, 2014, The Wildlife News 

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"288","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 20px; width: 333px; height: 250px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]If the public really understood the illogic behind Forest Service management, including those endorsed by forest collaboratives, I am certain there would be more opposition to current Forest Service policies.

First, most FS timber sales lose money. They are a net loss to taxpayers. After the costs of road construction, sale layout and environmental analyses, wildlife surveys, (reforestration and other mitigation if required) is completed, most timber sales are unprofitable.

Indeed, the FS frequently uses a kind of accounting chicanery, often ignoring basic overhead costs like the money spent on trucks, gasoline, office space, and the personnel expenses of other experts like wildlife biologists, soil specialists and hydrologists that may review a timber sale during preparation that ought to be counted as a cost of any timber program.

The FS will assert that ultimately there are benefits like logging roads provide access for recreation or that thinning will reduce wildfire severity. However, as will be pointed out later, most of these claims are not really benefits. We have thousands of miles of roads already, and adding more does not create a benefit. Reducing wildfires–even if thinning did do this which is questionable–it can be argued that we should not be reducing wildfire severity.

Consequently, the future of biomass power lies with developing technologies to gasify or liquefy biomass, so that it can be burned more efficiently. This research closely parallels efforts to develop clean-coal technologies. Other biomass research focuses on developing fast-growing trees or grasses.

Gasification and liquefaction technologies are not here yet. You certainly don’t come to the mountains or the arid West for fast-growing trees. Cutting down natural forests and hauling the wood 60 miles hardly qualifies as using industrial waste materials at their source.

Colorado is blessed with great solar and wind resources. These are our best sources for renewable energy. Here and now, at the expense of losing Summit County’s beautiful forests and trails, is clearly not the place for biomass power.

Howard Brown lives near Silverthorne. While he has extensive environmental policy analysis experience at the federal, state and local levels, he attributes his expertise to observing and asking questions while enjoying Summit County’s beauty.

- by George Wuerthner, September 25, 2014, The Wildlife News

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"271","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"line-height: 20.6719989776611px; width: 228px; height: 251px; float: left; margin: 3px 10px;"}}]]If the public really understood the illogic behind Forest Service polices, including those endorsed by forest collaboratives, I am certain there would be more opposition to current Forest Service policies.

First, most FS timber sales lose money. They are a net loss to taxpayers. After the costs of road construction, sale layout and environmental analyses, wildlife surveys, (reforestration and other mitigation if required) is completed, most timber sales are unprofitable.

Indeed, the FS frequently uses a kind of accounting chicanery, often ignoring basic overhead costs like the money spent on trucks, gasoline, office space, and the personnel expenses of other experts like wildlife biologists, soil specialists and hydrologists that may review a timber sale during preparation that ought to be counted as a cost of any timber program.

The FS will assert that ultimately there are benefits like logging roads provide access for recreation or that thinning will reduce wildfire severity. However, as will be pointed out later, most of these claims are not really benefits. We have thousands of miles of roads already, and adding more does not create a benefit. Reducing wildfires–even if thinning did do this which is questionable–it can be argued that we should not be reducing wildfire severity.

- by Chad Hanson, August 28, 2014, Earth Island Journal 

[How much of the forests that experienced the Rim Fire will be feeding biomass incinerators? -Ed.]

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"258","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"359","style":"line-height: 20.6719989776611px; width: 555px; height: 415px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","title":"Photo: David Lucas","width":"480"}}]]The US Forest Service issued a draft decision yesterday for a massive post-fire logging project in the Stanislaus National Forest portion of the 2013 California Rim Fire, which covered 257,171 acres on the national forest and Yosemite National Park. A final, signed decision on the proposal is expected this afternoon. 

The draft decision proposes over 37,000 acres of intensive post-fire logging, which would remove the majority of the rarest and most ecologically valuable habitat resulting from the fire on the Stanislaus National Forest: “snag forest habitat” created by high-intensity fire in mature conifer forest. (Forty one percent of the Rim Fire area was comprised of non-conifer vegetation, such as grassland and foothill chaparral, and most of the forest area burned at low/moderate-intensity, wherein only a portion of the trees were killed). 

This would include essentially clear-cutting 95 percent of the snags (standing fire-killed trees) in 19,462 acres of the fire area. An additional 17,706 acres of “roadside” logging is planned along roads, including old logging roads, which are not maintained for public use (and many of which are closed roads, long since decommissioned). Much of this would be clearcut too, including live, healthy, mature, and old-growth trees, which would be removed by the thousands, for no credible public safety benefit, based upon profoundly vague criteria that allow just about any tree to be cut.