Just a place to flag items for now
Carbon sequestration and storage implications of three forest management regimes in the Wabanaki-Acadian Forest: A review of the evidence
Emma Cox et al., 2023 in Environmental Reviews Forests contain substantial carbon stores, including above and belowground biomass and living and non-living biomass. Different management regimes produce different outcomes related to stored and sequestered carbon in forests. The geographic focus of this study is the Wabanaki-Acadian Forest of the Maritime Provinces of Canada (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island). This study reviews the literature to evaluate the carbon impacts of (1) intensive forest management for fiber products, (2) unharvested (or conservation) forest, and (3) climate-focused, ecological forestry. Each of these forest management strategies and concomitant silviculture regimes sequester and store carbon at varying rates and across different carbon pools in the forest. The literature suggests that unharvested (conservation) forests store and sequester the most carbon, and traditional, intensive fiber management stores and sequesters the least. Ecological forestry may provide the best balance between carbon sequestration and storage and climate adaptability, while also allowing for the provision of some timber/fiber products. This study also discusses the co-benefits offered by forests under each of the three management regimes. New research, in general and in the region, needs to examine further belowground carbon dynamics in soil as most efforts to document carbon focus on aboveground carbon pools.
Biomass equations for sixty-five North American tree species
Michael T. Ter-Mikaelian aand Michael D. Korzukhin Forest Ecology and Management 97 ( 1997) I-24 “The paper presents a comprehensive review of the biomass equations for 65 North American tree species. All equations are of the form M = a@, where M is the oven-dry weight of the biomass component of a tree (kg), D is diameter at breast height (DBH) (cm), and a and b are parameters. Equations for the following tree components were included in the review: total aboveground biomass, stem wood, stem bark, total stem (wood and bark), foliage, and branches (wood and bark). A total of 803 equations are presented with the range of DBH values of the sample, sample size, coefficient of determination R2, standard error of the estimate, fitting method used to estimate the parameters a and b, correction factor for a biasintroduced by logarithmic transformation of the data, site index and geographic location of the sampled stand(s), and a reference to the paper in which the equation (or the data) was published. The review is a unique source of equations that can be used to estimate tree biomass and/or to study the variation of biomass components for a tree species.”
The mycorrhizal symbiosis: research frontiers in genomics, ecology, and agricultural application
Francis M. Martin et al., 2024. New Phytologist (2024) 242: 1486–1506. Full PDF
Individual canopy tree species maps for the National Ecological Observatory Network
Weinstein et al., 2024 PlosOne
Related: Scientists use machine learning to predict diversity of tree species in forests
on Phys.org. A collaborative team of researchers led by Ben Weinstein of the University of Florida, Oregon, US, used machine learning to generate highly detailed maps of over 100 million individual trees from 24 sites across the U.S., and published their findings July 16 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology. These maps provide information about individual tree species and conditions, which can greatly aid conservation efforts and other ecological projects. …To generate large and highly detailed forest maps, the researchers trained a type of machine learning algorithm called a deep neural network using images of the tree canopy and other sensor data taken by plane. …The deep neural network was able to classify most common tree species with 75 to 85% accuracy. Additionally, the algorithm could also provide other important analyses, such as reporting which trees are alive or dead.
Redefining the wildfire problem and scaling solutions to meet the challenge
B. Law et al., 2023. In Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Volume 79, 2023 – Issue 6: Special issue: Climate change: Where we are now. “Abstract. As the climate warms, extended drought and heat events in the United States are driving an increase in acres burned and homes lost to wildfire. The most devastating wildfires happen when dry winds carry embers long distances, start spot fires and ignite homes. Burning homes then become the fuel that ignites other nearby homes, causing mass conflagrations. Today wildfire is largely approached as a problem that can be controlled through vegetation treatments and firefighting, but that strategy has not stopped the loss of homes and even entire communities. However, new observational and analytical tools have given firefighters, governments, and the public a better understanding of wildfire and how to prepare for it. By redefining the wildfire problem as a home ignition problem, communities can survive even extreme fires and can safely reintroduce fire to the land.”
The 2023 state of the climate report: Entering uncharted territory
William J. Ripple et al., 2023 in BioScience “Life on planet Earth is under siege. We are now in an uncharted territory. For several decades, scientists have consistently warned of a future marked by extreme climatic conditions because of escalating global temperatures caused by ongoing human activities that release harmful greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. Unfortunately, time is up. We are seeing the manifestation of those predictions as an alarming and unprecedented succession of climate records are broken, causing profoundly distressing scenes of suffering to unfold. We are entering an unfamiliar domain regarding our climate crisis, a situation no one has ever witnessed firsthand in the history of humanity. In the present report, we display a diverse set of vital signs of the planet and the potential drivers of climate change and climate-related responses first presented by Ripple and Wolf and colleagues (2020), who declared a climate emergency …”
A call to reduce the carbon costs of forest harvest
Moomaw & Law 2023. In Nature NEWS AND VIEWS. “Economic modelling of the global carbon cost of harvesting wood from forests shows a much higher annual cost than that estimated by other models, highlighting a major opportunity for reducing emissions by limiting wood harvests.”
Protect large trees for climate mitigation, biodiversity, and forest resilience
David J. Mildrexler et al., 2023 in Conservation Science & Practice “Protecting the climate system requires urgently reducing carbon emissions to the atmosphere and increasing cumulative carbon stocks in natural systems. Recent studies confirm that large trees accumulate and store a disproportionate share of aboveground forest carbon. In the temperate forests of the western United States, a century of intensive logging drastically reduced large-trees and older forest, but some large trees remain. However, recent changes to large tree management policy on National Forest lands east of the Cascade Mountains crest in Oregon and southeastern Washington allows increased harvesting of large-diameter trees (≥53 cm or 21 inches) that account for just 3% of all stems, but hold 42% of total aboveground carbon. In this article, we describe synergies with protecting large trees for climate mitigation, biodiversity, and forest resilience goals to shift species composition, reduce fuel loads and stem density, and adapt to climatically driven increases in fire activity in eastern Oregon.”
What Is the Impact of Mass Timber Utilization on Climate and Forests?
by Rachel Pasternack et al., 2022 in Sustainabilty
CAN RISING DEMAND FOR TIMBER IN CONSTRUCTION ACCELERATE DEFORESTATION?
Eduardo Rojas Briales & Simon Flinn. 2023 World Conf on Timber Engineering Oslo 2023 “Timber, and increasingly Mass Engineered Timber (MET), plays a key role in green building programmes around the world. Its use addresses the UN Sustainable Development Goals, especially SDG 11 – Sustainable Cities and Communities, SDG 13-Climate action, SDG 15-Life on Land and many others that are directly or indirectly linked to forests and construction. Many Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) recognize the environmental benefits of Mass Engineered Timber in comparison to traditional construction materials such as steel and concrete. The importance of timber in the
construction industry has led asset specialists to estimate that over the next 30 years, timber consumption could rise by over 140%. In the EU alone, wood consumption is estimated to be 3.5 times higher than the global average…Finding the balance between demand for forest products and preserving forests through FM will ultimately rely on robust Chain of Custody (CoC) data – informing policy; purchasing strategy; and due diligence, especially if aligned wit consistent domestic policies in the areas of tenure, land use and forestry. ”
Navigating the loop: the evaluation of circular economy practices on sustainable wood utilization in contemporary industries: a literature review
B Seier – 2024 – repository.utl.pt “This thesis extensively explores the integration of Circular Economy practices in the
sustainable utilization of wood within two contemporary industries by analysing 29 distinct …”
The Role of Insurance in Scaling Mass Timber Construction: Review on Enablers and Shortcomings
Conference paper First Online: 01 June 2024. Insurance Issues…
Björnsson, L., Ericsson, K. Emerging technologies for the production of biojet fuels from wood—can greenhouse gas emission reductions meet policy requirements?. Biomass Conv. Bioref. 14, 7603–7622 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13399-022-02916-0
USDA:Biofuels Annual
August 14, 2023
Circulating blame in the circular economy: The case of wood-waste biofuels and coal ash
Joel Millward-Hopkins a, Phil Purnell b in Energy Policy 2019
Abstract
The transition from coal-based electricity to ‘carbon neutral’ biofuels derived from forests has catalysed a debate largely centred upon whether woody-biofuels drive deforestation. Consequently, a crucial point is often missed. Most wood pellets used in electricity production are derived from waste-wood; a practice considered acceptable by many otherwise strongly opposed to the industry. We highlight that, precisely because waste-wood is a ‘waste’, its carbon-neutral credentials should be questioned. We then examine a parallel development occurring within the same industrial system; the recovery of electricity producers’ combustion-ash residues for concrete production. Contrasting how accounting practices allocate upstream carbon to these ‘wastes’ in the cases of wood pellets and coal-ash reveals how decisions are shaped by industry imperatives, rather than established lifecycle techniques. If the politics of emissions allocation continue to evolve in this way, it may become increasingly difficult to distinguish where progress towards a low-carbon, environmentally sustainable and circular economy is real, from where it is an artefact of biased and inconsistent accounting practices.
GHG displacement factors of harvested wood products: the myth of substitution
Philippe Leturcq in Nature Scientific Reports 2020 A common idea is that substituting wood for fossil fuels and energy intensive materials is a better strategy in mitigating climate change than storing more carbon in forests. This opinion remains highly questionable for at least two reasons. Firstly, the carbon footprints of wood-products are underestimated as far as the “biomass carbon neutrality” assumption is involved in their determination, as it is often the case. When taking into account the forest carbon dynamics consecutive to wood harvest, and the limited lifetime of products, these carbon footprints are time-dependent and their presumed values under the carbon neutrality assumption are achieved only in steady-state conditions. Secondly, even if carbon footprints are correctly assessed, the benefit of substitutions is overestimated when all or parts of the wood products are supposed to replace non-wood products whatever the market conditions. Indeed, substitutions are effective only if an increase in wood product consumption implies verifiably a global reduction in non-wood productions. When these flaws in the evaluation of wood substitution effects are avoided, one must conclude that increased harvesting and wood utilization may be counter-productive for climate change mitigation objectives, especially when wood is used as a fuel.” From the Conclusion: The current option to increase forest harvesting with a view to climate change mitigation through substitution effects is therefore a serious error. This does not mean that the utilization of wood produced by forests is not legitimate, but only that this utilization cannot be justified by reasons of mitigation of climate change, except in very special cases. Forest exploitation and wood use should simply respond to technical, economic, social or societal needs while being subject, like other human activities, to a precise carbon accounting that allows judging, case by case, if they are well-founded (asserting “zero” for biomass emission factor is not an accounting practice). Alternatively, to enable the forest to play an important and perhaps decisive role in mitigating climate change, the direct means of increasing wooded areas and standing tree volumes remain, therefore storing carbon in the forests and, under condition of GHG substitution benefits, in wood products. To be effective, this strategy must rely on reforestation and restoration of natural forests more than on the plantation of forests with productive objectives.53,54
53. Moomaw, W. R., Masino, S. A. & Faison, E. K. Intact forests in the United States: Proforestation mitigates climate change and serves the greatest good. Front. For. Glob. Change 2, 27. https://doi.org/10.3389/ffgc.2019.00027 (2019).
43 Lewis, S. L., Wheeler, C. E., Mitchard, E. T. A. & Koch, A. Restoring natural forests is the best way to remove atmospheric carbon. Nature 568, 25–28 (2019).https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01026-8