How is trees harvested

With our tremendous dependency upon forests, the losses from these natural events are typically regarded as negative and something to avoid, if possible. Clearcutting is an economical and ecologically viable way to reduce the negative effects of natural catastrophes at the same time accommodating the ecological requirements of these kinds of forest types. The shelterwood system lies somewhere in between the visual extremes of clearcutting and selection management. The parent forest is removed in several stages, with each stage successively establishing optimum environmental conditions for tree regeneration and then nursing the regeneration along to a point where the remaining parent forest can be harvested.

Red oaks and white pine stands will often benefit from shelterwood harvesting. Shelterwood harvest in an oak stand to encourage regeneration. Forest management and timber harvest systems utilize a very deep reservoir of forest research and experience. Practices are well-grounded in the applied ecological sciences, despite how some might appear to the casual observer.

Wood is a renewable natural resource, providing an edge over any other raw material. The harvesting and processing of wood products also incurs the least amount of negative environmental impact, by any measure. Oak removed for control of oak wilt. All trees die. Using some of them to supply our needs is a good thing. In the USA, each person uses about pounds of wood per day.

Yet, in Michigan, we have huge amounts of forest growth, among the greatest accumulation in the nation. Forest-based industries provide markets for wood products, which expand forest management opportunities. These industries have become especially important in our rural areas. Managed forests provide for healthier forests and produce more of all the values we want from forests.

Biomass chips are not very valuable one or two dollars a ton usually , but they can provide a financial incentive to cut unhealthy, low-value trees that may not otherwise have a use.

By increasing the utilization of the trees that are cut, a harvest designed to improve the health and vigor of a forest may be more economically feasible. However, concerns about whole-tree harvesting have existed since the s, when machinery that first enabled its practice was developed. This concern was centered on the idea of the potential for soil nutrient depletion. This is a major concern to foresters, whose job is to sustainably manage forestland.

Studies by others over the past few decades have examined the soils to look for nutrient depletion, but have found mixed results. For the research, I measured the natural regeneration in clear-cuts that had been whole-tree or conventionally harvested years prior.

These young forests were thick with fast-growing trees about 15 feet tall and an inch or two in diameter. Over the course of two summers, almost 7, individual trees were measured. As opposed to studies by others which measured soil nutrient content, this study measured tree growth and composition directly. Measuring a tree in a year-old clearcut.

More importantly, energy producers do not pay pulpwood prices when the price of harvest slash is negligible. Our blog post on capacity to pay offers further evidence of why whole trees are simply not sourced for energy purposes. If a whole tree is used to produce energy, it is because the tree is an otherwise unmerchantable pulpwood-sized tree that took years to grow. The Environmental Protection Agency recognizes pre-commercial thinnings that remove these and other trees as a best practice and considers trees taken in first thinnings to qualify as biomass under the renewable fuel standards RFS.

Consider also the practices the industry has implemented to create maximum value from harvested trees. In the s, it took 5. Today, sawmills have adopted laser technology to improve the average to 3.

In addition, companies throughout the industry have implemented ways to use the wood waste their operations create through boilers that use bark, harvest slash, and other mill residues to generate the heat and electricity needed to dry lumber or run paper machines.

Quite frankly, the allegation that the forest products industry allows the use of whole trees for energy insults both landowners who invest a great deal of time and money into their trees and wood products companies whose long-term viability relies on their ability to maximize the potential of harvested trees.

What we can offer you. We provide detailed transactional data, cost benchmarks and in-depth analytics for participants in the wood raw materials supply chain. SilvaStat Platform. How Harvested Trees Are Used. September 23, Forest Management. Author: LeAndra Spicer. You May Also be Interested In.