Monthly Archives: February 2018

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Today’s Takeaway

Maine goes to bat for New Brunswick lumber producers and some Quebec mills

February 20, 2018
Category: Today's Takeaway

Maine Governor Paul LePage has asked the US Dept. of Commerce to exempt New Brunswick from duties against Canadian lumber, blaming BC for the softwood dispute. LePage also believes that some mills in Quebec near the US border should be excluded. In other Business news, Trudeau announces investment deal with India [that includes pulp] and Gorman Bros. drops a shift due to reductions in beetle kill logs.

In Forestry news, BC’s NDP turns its attention to raw log exports; FSC’s rigour is challenged by a Yale School of Forestry publication; the US Congress fails to fix the funding formula for wildfire management; the Dept. of Interior is in turmoil due to changes in public land management; and a million trees have been pledged to offset Trump’s non-climate plan.

Finally, New Zealand robotics offers new solutions for forest safety and shortages of skilled machine operators; while new laser technology in the UK seeks to measure forest canopy changes over time.

— Kelly McCloskey, Tree Frog Editor

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Softwood prices continue to rise, longer-term view positive despite duties

February 19, 2018
Category: Today's Takeaway

Softwood lumber prices continue to rise as strong demand and tight supply are expected to keep prices high throughout 2018. Ken Shields (Conifex) believes growth in demand will outstrip supply through 2020, Ted Seraphim says West Fraser’s “longer-term outlook is really positive”, and Don Demens has renewed Western’s capital investment plans.

In Business news: Norpac continues to “draw the ire of US publishers” over tariffs; the Canadian government [via FPInnovations] is helping small business in Northern Ontario; SmartLam is the second CLT company to expand to Maine; and Brexit’s impact on the timber sector is being debated in the UK.

In other news: a Q&A with Michael Green; yet another “world’s largest timber tower“; how tree rings reveal our past and future; and a biofuel breakthrough in the UK.

Finally, if you’re in Victoria BC, check out the ABCFP’s free public lecture on the “Future of Wildfire in BC” and what we can learn from the California experience. 

— Kelly McCloskey, Tree Frog Editor

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Special Feature

The Future of Wildfire in BC

The Association of BC Forest Professionals
February 19, 2018
Category: Special Feature
Region: Canada, Canada West

Scott Stephens

What can we learn from California? The summer of 2017 brought the worst wildfire season in BC history. It was the same story in California where the Golden State experienced five of its 20 most destructive wildland-urban interface fires in just one year. Is this the new normal? Join Scott Stephens, professor of fire science at the University California, Berkeley, for a free public lecture on the future of wildfire in BC and what we can learn from California’s experience. The lecture is presented in conjunction with the Association of BC Forest Professionals’ annual conference.

Scott Stephens, PhD Director, University of California, Berkeley Center for Fire Research Outreach and co-director of the UC Center for Forestry Introduced by Tim Sheldan, Deputy Minister, Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations & Rural Development

Free Public Lecture – 6:30—7:30 PM Wednesday February 21st
Victoria Conference Centre
Lower Pavilion—Lecture Hall

Sponsored by Natural Resources Canada

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Business & Politics

Trudeau announces two-way investment deal with India worth $1 billion

Canadian Press in Globe and Mail
February 20, 2018
Category: Business & Politics
Region: Canada

Some of India’s biggest companies say they will invest more than $250-million in Canada in the coming years in everything from pulp mills to pharmaceuticals and the IT sector. Canada, meanwhile, will invest $750-million in India. The news came after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau [met] with six of this country’s most influential business tycoons making deals that he says will create at least 5,000 new jobs in Canada. …Kumar Birla, the chairman of Indian conglomerate Aditya Birla Group and the country’s eighth wealthiest person, says the business friendliness of the federal and provincial governments in Canada makes for happy investors who will always come back looking for more. He says his company – which is largely focused on the natural resources sector and already owns pulp mills in Ontario and New Brunswick – has three business expansions planned in Canada in fibre, carbon black and rolled aluminum products.

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Canadian producers buoyant about 2018 as duties expected keep prices high

By Ross Marowits
The Canadian Press in iPolitic
February 19, 2018
Category: Business & Politics
Region: Canada, United States

MONTREAL — Softwood lumber duties aren’t dampening the spirits of Canadian lumber producers as strong demand from rising U.S. housing starts and tight supply is expected to keep prices high throughout 2018. The number of U.S. housing starts beat expectations by surpassing 1.33 million in January on a seasonally adjusted basis, with single family starts increasing 7.6 per cent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s figures. Housing permits approached 1.4 million. …Paul Quinn of RBC Capital Markets said the thinking among Canadian producers has changed over the past year. They originally expected to absorb half the duties with the other half being passed on to consumers. …Maine Gov. Paul LePage met with Wilbur Ross, pressing the U.S. for an exemption for New Brunswick and some Quebec border mills from softwood lumber duties, according to a U.S. government filing.

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Maine Governor seeks tariff exemption for New Brunswick lumber firms

By Brent Jang
The Globe and Mail
February 19, 2018
Category: Business & Politics
Region: Canada, United States

Paul LePage

Maine Governor Paul LePage has asked the U.S. Department of Commerce to exempt New Brunswick from punitive duties against Canadian lumber shipments into the United States, blaming British Columbia for the softwood dispute. Mr. LePage made the request to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. …Mr. LePage told the meeting that Maine typically sends logs to Canadian sawmills, and much of the production of lumber is shipped to the United States. But he warned that the softwood fight has thrown hundreds of Maine loggers out of work. …All four Atlantic provinces escaped U.S. tariffs and quotas for decades in the long-running softwood dispute dating back to 1982, but New Brunswick lost its exemption in this fifth round of the trade fight. …Besides requesting duty exemptions for New Brunswick producers, Mr. LePage believes that some mills in Quebec near the U.S. border should also be excluded from the tariffs.

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U.S. demand for Canadian softwood lumber expected to remain high

By Ross Marowits
The Canadian Press in CBC News
February 19, 2018
Category: Business & Politics
Region: Canada

Softwood lumber duties aren’t dampening the spirits of Canadian lumber producers as strong demand from rising U.S. housing starts and tight supply are expected to keep prices high throughout 2018. The number of U.S. housing starts beat expectations by surpassing 1.33 million in January on a seasonally adjusted basis, with single family starts increasing 7.6 per cent. Housing permits approached 1.4 million. Conifex Timber Inc. chairman and CEO Kenneth Shields said last week he also expects repair and remodelling markets will remain robust. …West Fraser Timber Co. Ltd. CEO Ted Seraphim said North American lumber demand should grow by two billion board feet per year, while U.S. production will only modestly increase by the 750 million to one billion board foot range annually. …Don Demens, CEO of Western Forest Products Inc., said [he] has reversed plans to cut back on capital investments because of uncertainty in the softwood dispute.

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Mass layoffs at Gorman

By Trevor Nichols
The Okanagan Edge
February 19, 2018
Category: Business & Politics
Region: Canada, Canada West

A lagging lumber supply has led West Kelowna’s Gorman Bros. Lumber Ltd. to let go of at least 20 employees. Nick Arkle, Gorman’s co-CEO, told Okanagan Edge the mill has cut down its third shift over the past few weeks as it adjusts to a dwindling supply of logs left over from the Mountain Pine Beetle’s massacre of B.C. forests. …Lumber mills have been gobbling up those dead trees for years, but Arkle says timber stands are “now being brought back down to the long-term sustainable levels,” and mills have to adjust. …Arkle said Gorman’s adjustments have seen its first two shifts maintain a “fairly routine” supply of timber, but that running a third shift was leading to “very tight log inventories.”

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Its full production for Domtar pulp mill employees

By Gia Patil
Sudbury.com
February 17, 2018
Category: Business & Politics
Region: Canada, Canada East

Approximately 150 workers who were laid off at the Espanola pulp mill are back at work, as production at the facility recommenced Friday night. Unifor Local 74 President Joanne Lamothe confirmed the workers were back on the job. The mill, owned and operated by Domtar, had begun laying off workers at 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday night in response to a shortage of trained staff. …Unifor said the shutdown was necessary because a lack shortage of trained and qualified operators made it impossible to perform many operations safely. “This temporary shutdown was a manpower issue, which has been resolved,” Lamothe said. …Neither side explained how the issue has been resolved so quickly.

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Congress ‘punts’ again on wildfire funding

By Peter Aleshire
Payson Roundup
February 20, 2018
Category: Business & Politics
Region: United States, US West

The federal budget deal didn’t directly address the debilitating cost of fighting wildfires, but did set aside $90 billion to pay for natural disasters — most of it earmarked for hurricanes in Hawaii. The budget also provided for $300 billion in new spending, raised the debt ceiling and lifted the budget caps that had limited the speed with which the deficit was growing. However, most of the key details governing things like the Forest Service wildfire budget will have to be worked out in committee in the next month. The Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management has for years pleaded with Congress to end the practice of “fire borrowing,” which requires those agencies to shift money from things like forest restoration into firefighting — which now consumes half the total Forest Service budget.

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Enviva completes Colombo acquisition

By Adam Benson
Index-Journal
February 17, 2018
Category: Business & Politics
Region: United States, US East

A Maryland-based biomass company has formally acquired the former Colombo Energy wood pellet plant on Highway 246 in Greenwood County, and has plans to dramatically ramp annual production, officials said in a press release. “Enviva intends to make investments in the Greenwood plant to improve operational efficiency and add additional emissions control equipment at the company expects will increase its production capacity to 600,000 metric tons of wood pellets per year by 2019, subject to receiving the necessary permits,” Enviva said in a statement. That level of output is more than three times the 172,000 tons per year that the facility was generating under Colombo’s ownership.

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Brexit debate underway in timber sector, UK traders told

Timber Trades Journal
February 19, 2018
Category: Business & Politics
Region: International

Government departments are in contact with timber industry representative bodies about the effects of Brexit, a gathering of more than 200 UK traders has been told. Timber Trade Federation managing director David Hopkins told a lively annual dinner of the Western Timber Association in Bristol on February 16 that a very real debate surrounding Brexit and how it may affect the industry was ramping up. “There are a lot of things in there that affect our business and we are trying to make sure the timber industry is represented in the debate,” he said. “Government departments are asking us questions.”  Mr Hopkins said the recent Confederation of Timber Industries parliamentary reception at Westminster saw the first public UK government assurance that the EU Timber Regulation would continue in UK law post-Brexit,

 

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Wood, Paper & Green Building

FPInnovations 2018 Benchmarking of Bleached Kraft Pulps

FPInnovations
February 20, 2018
Category: Wood, Paper & Green Building
Region: Canada

FPInnovations and Fisher International collaborate to offer you unique studies that surface insights vital to the health and competitiveness of your organization. FPInnovations is inviting mills worldwide tobenchmark the quality of their fully bleached kraft pulps. Each mill participating in this program will send a representative sample(s) of pulp (softwood or hardwood) to FPInnovations to be tested in its ISO-accredited laboratory. The nal report will be made available to all participants in English. Each mill will be assigned an anonymous code number. Any speci c information pertaining to the mills, such as process conditions or type of end-use products for which the pulp is intended, will remain strictly con dential. …Through their FisherSolveTM platform, the experts at Fisher International have benchmarked virtually all worldwide producers of BSK and BHK to provide you
with quanti able insight in areas that directly impact your bottom line. 

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University of British Columbia architects’ tall wood talk aims high

By Peter Caulfield
Journal of Commerce
February 20, 2018
Category: Wood, Paper & Green Building
Region: Canada, Canada West

Zahra Teshnizi

Angelique Pilon

Wondering how the University of British Columbia (UBC) was able to erect an 18-storey, structural mass-timber student residence? Two architects provided answers at Vancouver Buildex 2018, which took February in Vancouver. The architects are from the UBC Sustainability Initiative department. Angelique Pilon is the director of research and Zahra Teshnizi is a research project co-ordinator. Pilon says the presentation is not aimed at wood specialists, but at anyone who is interested in mass timber. …With approximately 15 buildings on the Point Grey campus using mass-timber, UBC has been at the forefront of the growth of wood construction, Pilon says. …In addition, structural mass timber has been used in the community centres of some residential neighbourhoods on the UBC campus.

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Connection system design integral to mass timber builds

By Don Proctor
Journal of Commerce
February 20, 2018
Category: Wood, Paper & Green Building
Region: Canada, Canada East

The design of connection systems for modern mass timber buildings is critical and “can be a major cost factor that requires a detailed understanding of fastening systems to find economical solutions.” That is the word of Max Closen, owner of Vancouver-based MyTiCon Timber Connectors, a specialty supplier of connection systems for new mass timber and heavy timber buildings. Through Ontario Wood WORKS!, MyTiCon recently delivered educational seminars on timber connections in Ottawa and Toronto to builders and designers keen on learning more about the new mass timber midrise movement. …Closen said while government agencies, industry partners and not-for-profit groups have helped raise the profile of mass timber structures, increased education is still needed as the pace of construction picks up.

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Ceremony marks start of lumber procurement for Tokyo 2020 Olympic Village facility

The Japan Times
February 19, 2018
Category: Wood, Paper & Green Building
Region: International

SHIRAKAWA, GIFU PREF. – A tree-cutting ceremony took place in the village of Shirakawa on Tuesday to mark the start of lumber procurement for a communal facility in the Olympic Village at the 2020 Tokyo Games. The Gifu Prefecture village is one of 63 municipalities providing wood for the Village Plaza as part of an initiative by the Tokyo Games organizing committee to involve all parts of Japan. …Chain saws were then used to cut down a Japanese cypress tree 28 meters high and 50 centimeters in diameter. …Set to be built in the Harumi waterfront area of Tokyo, the Village Plaza will form part of the village. It will be made with domestic wood to showcase Japan’s culture and traditions and serve as an example of environmental sustainability.

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World’s tallest wooden skyscraper planned in Tokyo

By Holly Elliott
CNBC News
February 20, 2018
Category: Wood, Paper & Green Building
Region: International

A Japanese company is planning to build the world’s tallest wooden skyscraper with 90 percent of the building made of wood. Sumitomo Forestry says its wooden high-rise — dubbed the W350 — will be 350 meters tall and the planned structure will be a hybrid of mostly wood and steel. The 70-storey building, expected to be built in Tokyo, will comprise of stores, offices, hotels and private homes. …Using 185,000 cubic meters of timber, the building is expected to cost around 600 billion Japanese yen ($5.6 billion) which is twice the amount of a conventional high-rise building constructed with current technology. …The concept for the building has been prepared primarily at Tsukuba Research Institute. …Sumitomo Forestry can trace its origins in the timber industry back to 1691 and the W350 building is planned to mark the company’s 350th anniversary in 2041.

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Forestry

NDP turn attention to raw log exports

By Greg Fry
CFJC Today
February 19, 2018
Category: Forestry
Region: Canada, Canada West

KAMLOOPS  — It was an issue they hammered at while in opposition and one they raised often during last year’s provincial election campaign: the NDP’s quest to halt raw log exports. B.C. Forests Minister Doug Donaldson addressed the issue while in Kamloops recently, noting the level of raw exports, up to six million cubic metres a year until recently, is not satisfactory. “That’s not what communities want to see. Our way of addressing it is looking at methods for more B.C. logs to be processed in B.C. mills so that there’s more jobs provided through the publicly held resource,” he told reporters. …”What we’ve seen is a disconnect between the volumes and the publicly held forest resource and the positive impact that that can have on communities.”

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Governments of Canada and British Columbia to collaborate with First Nations on recovery of Southern Mountain Caribou

By Environment and Climate Change Canada
Cision Newswire
February 15, 2018
Category: Forestry
Region: Canada, Canada West

VICTORIA – The herds that form the Central Group of Southern Mountain Caribou are critically important to First Nations in northeast British Columbia. Habitat loss and fragmentation have already contributed to the extirpation of one of the sub-populations of the Central Group – the Burnt Pine herd. Other caribou populations in the region continue to be seriously threatened. Those populations are either declining or have been stabilized at very low numbers that are unlikely to be sustainable in the absence of meaningful and effective action by the federal and provincial governments.   The federal Species at Risk Act authorizes the federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change to enter into conservation agreements with other governments to benefit species at risk and enhance the survival of those species in the wild. 

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Along the Fraser: Ready to fight fire at Maple Ridge research forest

By Jack Emberly, retired teacher
BC Local News
February 17, 2018
Category: Forestry
Region: Canada, Canada West

Paul Lawson

Paul Lawson is the director of the Malcolm Knapp UBC Research Forest in Maple Ridge and the Alex Fraser Research Forest near Williams Lake. For him, the worst fire season in B.C. history last year was “a life-altering experience.” It began July 6. Lawson’s Maple Ridge office got an emergency call from Alex Fraser. Fires had forced the evacuation of the town and closed Highway 7 north from 100 Mile House. Now, Malcolm Knapp’s sister forest had seven fires of its own. …“B.C. Wildfire [Services] were overwhelmed,” he explains, “focused on built-up areas, such as the town of Williams Lake and the airport; not able to attend our fires initially, nor provide resources at the start. …Watkins credits the support of Alex Fraser staff, logging contractors, neighbors and “even strangers who wanted to help.” Lawson agrees.

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Trees for Trump: one million plants pledged to offset U-turn on climate change

The Guardian
February 19, 2018
Category: Forestry
Region: United States

Donald Trump

More than one million trees have been pledged for Trump Forest, a bid by environmentalists to offset the US president’s curtailing of Obama-era clean energy initiatives by planting 10 billion trees around the globe. “US president Donald Trump doesn’t believe in the science of human-caused climate change,” reads the website for the project, launched before Trump withdrew the US from the Paris climate accord. “So we’re planting a forest to soak up the extra greenhouse gases Trump plans to put into our atmosphere. …The project was launched last March and in less than a year over a million trees have been pledged from people around the world, but particularly in the US and Europe.

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Greenwashed Timber: How Sustainable Forest Certification Has Failed

By Richard Conniff
Yale Environment 360
February 20, 2018
Category: Forestry
Region: United States, International

The Forest Stewardship Council was established to create an international system for certifying sustainable wood. But critics say it has had minimal impact on tropical deforestation and at times has served only to provide a cover for trafficking in illegal timber. When the Forest Stewardship Council got its start in 1993, it seemed to represent a triumph of market-based thinking over plodding command-and-control government regulation. …The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) soon set standards that seemed genuinely exciting to environmental and social activists… A quarter-century later, frustrated supporters of FSC say it hasn’t worked out as planned, except maybe for the higher prices: FSC reports that tropical forest timber carrying its label brings 15 to 25 percent more at auction. …Moreover, a number of recent logging industry scandals suggest that the FSC label has at times served merely to “greenwash” or “launder” trafficking in illegal timber

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Flathead Forest receives 74 objections to land-use proposal

By Perry Backus
The Missoulian
February 19, 2018
Category: Forestry
Region: United States, US West

KALISPELL – With one deadline past and another looming, Flathead National Forest officials will be working weekends to identify the issues raised in objections filed on a proposed land-use plan. They tallied 74 objections when the objection period ended Monday on the plan that will guide future management decisions on the 2.4 million-acre forest for the next decade or longer. Over the next 90 days, the agency will work with different groups in an effort to resolve a variety of issues raised during a process that will be closely watched by those who care about the future of that landscape. It’s been 30 years since the last update to the Flathead Forest land-use plan.

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Turmoil shakes up agency in charge of vast US lands

By Mathew Brown
Associated Press in the St. Louis-Post Dispatch
February 19, 2018
Category: Forestry
Region: United States, US West

BILLINGS, Mont. — A year of upheaval at the U.S. Interior Department has seen dozens of senior staff members reassigned and key leadership positions left unfilled, rules considered burdensome to industry shelved, and a sweeping reorganization proposed for its 70,000 employees. The evolving status quo at the agency… has led to praise from energy and mining companies and Republicans, who welcomed the departure from perceived heavy-handed regulation under President Barack Obama. But the changes have drawn increasingly sharp criticism from conservationists, Democrats and some agency employees. …The differing views illustrate longstanding tensions over the role of America’s public lands — an amalgam of pristine wilderness, recreational playgrounds and abundant energy reserves.

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Forest Service transforms how it will use, manage fires in Southwest Colorado

By Jonathan Romeo
The Durango Herald
February 17, 2018
Category: Forestry
Region: United States, US West

Hon Schlapfer

To prevent a catastrophic wildfire in Southwest Colorado, the U.S. Forest Service intends to – literally – fight fire with fire. “For the first 100 years of the Forest Service, we’ve had a very aggressive fire-suppression philosophy,” said Matt Janowiak, district ranger for the Forest Service’s Columbine District, which manages nearly 700,000 acres of the San Juan National Forest. “As a result, we wound up with a lot of hazardous fuel buildup. Now, we’re trying to rebalance things out in the forest and let fire play its natural role in the ecosystem.” This spring, the U.S. Forest Service will finalize a plan two years in the making that seeks to completely revamp the way forest managers prevent wildfires, keying in on 80,000 acres between Vallecito Reservoir and the Piedra River.

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Nevada wildfire danger high even though it’s winter

Nevada Appeal
February 16, 2018
Category: Forestry
Region: United States, US West

RENO — Since Dec. 1, approximately 2,400 acres have been burned by 11 wildfires across the state on BLM managed lands, the Bureau of Land Management reported. “Although the fires remain under investigation, they were all human caused,” said Paul Petersen, fire management officer with the Bureau of Land Management. “During the summer fire season, most people are aware of the fire danger and take steps to reduce the risk of wildfires but they also need to be reminded the danger exists year round.” Nevada has received less than 50 percent of its average precipitation between October and January. Temperatures were also above normal for January as well. Snowpack across the state is reported to be less than 50 percent of normal.

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Lawmakers to consider tax credits for logging businesses

The Associated Press in the Seattle Times
February 19, 2018
Category: Forestry
Region: United States, US East

AUGUSTA, MAINE — Lawmakers are set to consider a lawmaker’s idea to offer tax credits for logging and trucking businesses that hire U.S. residents. The concept bill could receive a Tuesday committee vote. It’s sponsored by Democratic Senate Leader Troy Jackson, a fifth-generation logger whose family still works in Maine’s forests. Jackson’s bill was still in concept form at a January hearing. Professional Logging Contractors of Maine declined to take a position until it saw actual details. The trade group said in the last four years, Maine has seen the closure of five pulp and paper mills and the periodic idling of two wood energy electric facilities.

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Fighting fire with fire: Auburn University’s Dixon Center chosen for national Wildland Firefighter Apprenticeship Program

By Jamie Anderson
Opelika Auburn News
February 19, 2018
Category: Forestry
Region: United States, US East

For the first time in its history, the national Wildland Firefighter Apprenticeship Program is providing training in the eastern United States, and it is doing so at the Auburn University Solon Dixon Forestry Education Center in Andalusia. The training course, also known as WFAP, dates back to 1989 and is traditionally held in Sacramento, California. WFAP has trained more than 2,000 apprentices in wildland firefighting and prepared them for a future as fire managers. Wildland firefighters are dispatched to fight wildfires in national forests throughout the nation, including Alabama’s four national forests—Bankhead, Conecuh, Talladega and Tuskegee.

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Despite legislative setback, advocates hopeful for logging limits

By Christopher Stephens
The Herald Bulletin
February 17, 2018
Category: Forestry
Region: United States, US East

INDIANAPOLIS – Despite a failed bipartisan push to limit logging, environmental advocates are hopeful for the future of legislation to protect Hoosier wild forests. Two bills to protect some of the state’s old-growth forests were defeated in the Legislature early this year. …Jeff Stant, executive director of the Indiana Forest Alliance, said he was encouraged that 22 Democrats and 13 Republicans voted in favor, demonstrating the possibility of bipartisan cooperation to protect areas of the state’s forests.

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Logging in parks bill sparks debate

Sarah Goodrich
The Intermountain
February 18, 2018
Category: Forestry
Region: United States, US East

BUCKHANNON – A bill that would allow logging in West Virginia State Parks has state officials and local environmentalists debating the merits of tampering with nature. Senate Bill 270 would ultimately authorize the state Division of Natural Resources to implement silvicultural management for state parks. The proposed bill was introduced Jan. 15 and is sponsored by Senate President Mitch Carmichael, R-Jackson, and Senate Minority Leader Roman Prezioso, D-Marion. Mature forests, which cover the state, do not provide an environment for food or nesting material on the forest floor, explained Steve McDaniel, director of the Division of Natural Resources. …And this, he says, is a challenge to increasing tourism in the state and its parks, a task he has been assigned by Gov. Jim Justice.

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Lasers revolutionise mapping of forests

By University of Salford
Phys.org
February 20, 2018
Category: Forestry
Region: International

New laser scanning technologies developed at the University of Salford are being used to map forests in more detail than ever before. The technology could help give earlier and better data on the impacts of climate change on nature. …Mark Danson, professor of geography at the University of Salford said: “Climate change has led to earlier spring growth in forests in many part of the world but measuring the amount of leaves present in a forest canopy through time is currently almost impossible. “Our research is testing new methods to map three-dimensional leaf growth in forests, so that rather than rely on an ‘observer’ spotting growth in a forest on a given day, we can map the spatial and temporal changes in leaf development remotely.” …Measuring the leaf area manually took fifteen volunteers three whole days; the laser scanner reconstruction took just a few hours.

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Disease-resistant English elms planted in Sheffield

By Sheffield & Rotherham Wildlife Trust
BBC News
February 19, 2018
Category: Forestry
Region: International

Disease-resistant English elms are being planted in Sheffield as part of a national trial to combat the effects of Dutch elm disease. The fungal disease has killed more than 60 million trees in the UK since it arrived in the 1920s. Experts say outside a cordon sanitaire in Edinburgh and Bristol there are fewer than 1,000 old elms in the UK. The Sheffield initiative will see 24 disease-resistant saplings planted at Greno Woods nature reserve. They will be grown in a small area of ancient woodland provided by Sheffield & Rotherham Wildlife Trust following the first planting on Monday.

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Poland spares forest to win EU favor, but damage already done

By Agnieszka Barteczko
Reuters
February 19, 2018
Category: Forestry
Region: International

BIALOWIEZA, Poland – When Poland sought to ease tensions with the European Union by declaring a halt to logging in the ancient Bialowieza forest, it did not announce how many trees it had already cut down. In fact, logging quotas to 2021 had already been reached and in one part of the forest an expanded quota, declared illegal by the European Commission, had been more than half fulfilled despite an injunction, official forestry data shows. State Forests, the state-run body in charge of harvesting timber and protecting woodland, also confirmed that the forest’s two remaining administrative units were aiming to increase the quota of wood that they can harvest by 2021. …Environmentalists said the announcement came too late to prevent irreparable damage, albeit to a limited area.

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Environment groups walk away from NSW forestry negotiations

By Greg White
Coffs Coast Advocate
February 18, 2018
Category: Forestry
Region: International

Good working relationships stretching back more than two decades between the NSW Government and two key environment groups are on the point of collapse. The NSW Nature Conservation Council (NCC) and NSW National Parks Association (NPA) have both walked away from stakeholder consultations on the extension of the state’s three Regional Forest Agreements (RFA). These agreements were struck in the late 1990s and early 2000s and delivered a fragile peace in the forests wars that had raged for decades through the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. NCC chief executive Kate Smolski said the relationship now teeters on the edge as her organisation and the NPA walk away. “The government is putting threatened forest wildlife and an historic 20-year peace deal at risk by pushing ahead with a sham consultation process designed to lock in unsustainable logging indefinitely,” she said.

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Carbon, Climate & Bioenergy

Climate projections show a warmer future for the Pacific northwest

By Oregon State University
EurekAlert
February 20, 2018
Category: Carbon, Climate & Bioenergy
Region: United States, US West

CORVALLIS, Ore. — In the midst of an unseasonably warm winter in the Pacific Northwest, a comparison of four publicly available climate projections has shown broad agreement that the region will become considerably warmer in the next century if greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere rise to the highest levels projected in the the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) “business-as-usual” scenario. …The researchers chose to analyze projections for the recent past as well as for three 29-year periods from 2011 to 2100. Their goal was to characterize the differences to inform and guide scientists and land managers who are evaluating the projected impacts of climate change on local resources.

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A Renewed Focus on Forestry

By Matt Hongoltz-Hetling
Valley News
February 17, 2018
Category: Carbon, Climate & Bioenergy
Region: United States, US West

Hartland — Every landowner with a timber stand knows how to raise money by cutting trees down. But what if they could raise money by leaving their trees standing? “A lot of foresters are thinking about it more and more,” said A.J. Follensbee, a Windsor County forester with the Vermont Department of Forest, Parks and Recreation. “They’re writing it into their appraisal plans, thinking about carbon sequestration. It’s on a lot of landowners’ radar, because they care about climate change.” Follensbee is talking about “carbon farming,” an emerging theory of forest management touted by area foresters and environmental groups who say it has the potential to transform Vermont — 78 percent of which is covered by forest — into a giant carbon trap that could offset a significant chunk of the emissions from Vermont that contribute to global warming.

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Oregon’s forests unmatched in power to store carbon

By Fergus McLean
The Register-Guard
February 17, 2018
Category: Carbon, Climate & Bioenergy
Region: United States, US West

Fergus McLean

Readers not already exhausted by their frustrating daily efforts to separate meaningful information from “fake news” might take a moment to ponder why it is that what might be the best news ever about Oregon’s economy is being kept secret from the 2018 Legislature. That good news comes from the Oregon Global Warming Commission’s Forest Carbon Task Force, which finds that every year, Oregon’s forests overall take in, or sequester, 30 million tons of carbon dioxide. …Brand-new scientific data from regionwide U.S. Forest Service research plots in the Forest Inventory Analysis program reveal that Oregon is truly the timber capital of the world, as our forests — far from being carbon-neutral — absorb half of what the Global Warming Commission has previously considered to be Oregon’s total carbon footprint of 60 million tons a year.

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Third generation biofuels – implications for wood-derived fuels

By Jim Bowyer et al
Dovetail Partners
February 19, 2018
Category: Carbon, Climate & Bioenergy
Region: United States, US East

Jim Bowyer

Third-generation biofuels research and development is largely focused on algae as a raw material. Early research demonstrated that energy yields from a given surface area are far greater from algae than from plants currently used in producing biofuels. The great potential of algae is, however, clouded by a number of technical and economic hurdles which must be overcome before algae contributes in any significant way to providing energy for transportation. Among these are reduction of nutrient requirements in cultivation and energy requirements in processing. For the near to mid-term, at least, algae-derived biofuels are unlikely to pose competitive risks to the emerging second-generation cellulose-based biofuels industry.

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Biofuel breakthrough by scientists at University of York

By Mike Laycock
The Press
February 18, 2018
Category: Carbon, Climate & Bioenergy
Region: International

SCIENTISTS from the University of York are part of a team of researchers which has discovered enzymes in fungi capable of breaking down one of the main components of wood. The enzymes could now potentially be used to sustainably convert wood biomass into valuable chemical commodities such as biofuels. A university spokeswoman said that as an alternative to coal and oil, wood was increasingly one of the more promising sources of advanced biofuels but despite its potential, it was a difficult material to break down. … Prof Gideon Davies, also from the Department of Chemistry, said: “This discovery unlocks the key scientific challenge of how biorefineries can convert wood into biofuel in an environmental and cost-effective way, bringing us a step closer to a sustainable 21st Century.”

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Health & Safety

Robotics opportunities in forestry being explored

By Southern Wood Council
Scoop.co.nz
February 20, 2018
Category: Health & Safety

NEW ZEALAND — Forest safety, improving productivity and getting workers off the felling site has been a major push for forestry managers, forest owners, logging contractors and equipment suppliers to modify their wood harvesting operations over the last few years. Another major driver to increased mechanisation has been the skilled machine operator shortages that many forestry companies are now currently facing. The ultimate goal of the industry is to have “no worker on the slope, or no hand on the chainsaw”. …Firstly, a myriad of new designs and operations, including vision systems for remote operation of equipment, have been introduced to extract wood safely off steeper slopes. More recently, tele-operation of wood extraction has successfully been trialled in New Zealand where the operator is sitting separately and away from the felling and log extraction operations.

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