Logging Waste Products

SwampDonkey · June 14, 2008, 12:16:41 PM

Yes, never thought of that Tom.

jeremyperkins41 · June 14, 2008, 07:59:01 PM

Quote from: Frickman on February 01, 2008, 03:48:38 PM
It is very difficult to make any money now logging higher value products like saw and veneer logs. I can't see how I could make money harvesting biomass.

You better take the logs and cut the tops to sell also as firewood wit heating cost going up. ;D

zackman1801 · June 14, 2008, 08:55:11 PM

awhile back i took a trip to bethel maine with my forestry class to a job Chadborn (spelling?) tree farms was doing, they were using a harvester and feller buncher to harvest trees. the buncher was going through and taking out all the small useless stuff so the harvester could get to the better stuff. then they had 2 grapple skidders going in and taking the small stuff, and the tops the harvesters left behind and taking it to the landing to a big chipper with its own loader attached and chipping it right into a big rig on the landing. Then as the harvester harvested logs a forwarder would go through and take out the good logs. they also had hired a local logger to go in and take out the large pines that the harvester could not take down (harvester could only handle up to 20" logs i think the supervisor said) he would just for the most part take the trees out full length and buck in the landing and only leave the branches in the woods.
Although there are consequences to taking all of the branches and leaves out of the forest, they provide vital nutrients to the other trees in the area as they decompose so if you take everything out there is less nutrients in the area for the trees you left over. thats one of the reasons that the maine forest service started cracking down on big clearcuts in northern maine. companies were just going in and taking out 200-300acres of woods at a time and leaving nothing there, it was destroying the soil so that trees wouldn't even sprout up again.

Tom · June 14, 2008, 11:59:51 PM

zackman,
200 and 300 acre clear cuts may not be as bad as some people say. It really depends on the lay of the land and species of the trees that are expected to replace what was taken. That is why a Forester should be used to plan a harvest and not leave it to someone who only cares how much fiber they can remove. If a Forester specifies a clear cut, there is a reason. It is a valid and common management practice and may lead to betterment of the forest in the long run.

There are too many knee jerk assumptions made by folks who declare a management practice invalid without understanding the whole ecological story. The media is bad about it because logging makes good pictures and articles if devastation is the subject. It's easy to cry wolf when the immediate aesthetics aren't understood by the general population.

Some "Real" Foresters will be along after awhile and make good explanations. Don't be afraid to ask them questions.

zackman1801 · June 15, 2008, 12:26:27 AM

im not saying that its bad to clear cut in all situations as i understand that forests from time to time need to be completely restarted to make them grow better. They now require here in maine buffer strips of a certain amount of acres on clear cuts to make sure the soil dosent get too eroded. here in maine thats been a big fuss, if someone drives by a landing and sees mud dribbling into the road they would most likely call a state inspector of some sort who would come down and give you a fine. there are alot of people out there who dont like what we do and will do anything to stop us.

thecfarm · June 15, 2008, 04:13:52 AM

jeremyperkins41,welcome to the forum.You will like it here.

SwampDonkey · June 15, 2008, 06:36:12 AM

Zackman, I don't pretend to be all that well informed about forestry in the state of Maine. But most of the dark clouds I've been reading about have been caused by aesthetics of the view scape around townships and the fact that some private land has been bought up to simply cut the guts out of it and do nothing further with it like silviculture to nurture along the new forest. Yes, I'm sure there are troubles with erosion because some people can't seem to stay out of soft ground around water where some of the biggest spruce grow and improperly built roads lead to a lot of runoff and erosion. There is also problems with high grading. It happens here in NB as well and on 99% of woodlots there is no real plan or a forester involved so it's free-for-all for loggers. Most of the time if a forester gets involved he has to be the logger to in order to get the work and do the best he can. This is often a catch 22,. Who is he working for?. In addition, some lots are not even properly marked between adjacent owners, a whole set of other troubles.

As far as not being able to grow new trees from a freshly clearcut lot with all the fibre and debris removed, that isn't so. It takes many rotations of whole tree removal on most soils and fewer on some of course. Our soils are not like the tropics. With the media and highly paid movie celebrities with good looks and misinformation, people think what applies to Brazil forest applies to Acadian forest. Maybe if your lucky (some don't feel so lucky), you opened the site up to brachen that return N-P-K to the soil, maybe a few alders and hazel shrubs. But, then maybe hydrology is impacted, not necessarily so much by erosion but temperature increases, which effects streams and water table levels. Maybe more severe flooding and faster fluctuations in stream flow volume. Sometimes a site will become wetter after a clearcut, sometimes much drier.

They chipped forest here on crown land with the whole tree method in the 1980's. Everything but the leaves and roots left the sites. It was mostly discontinued because of equipment costs and because they, for the most part, changed their mentality about converting hardwood forest into spruce plantations. It still continues on a small portion of private and some free hold. Although, tolerant hardwood (beech, sugar maple, yellow birch) conversion is not supported by the government tree planting program on private lands. The thing about those types of harvests where everything is removed it opens the land up to pioneer species which are often not as desirable as the mature trees that were removed. Although, aspen is worth about as much as spruce right now and has decent markets up this way. Often the hardwood sites will be initially taken over by aspen, birch and pin cherry and many lesser shrub species like mountain maple, striped maple, beaked hazel, elder, raspberry, and blueberry and of course hardwood stump suckering. Great for the little critters and small birds though. Sometimes a hardwood site will be reclaimed by fir if the machinery doesn't destroy it. And hopefully that fir isn't 50 years old and 3 feet tall. :

Most mature softwood sites on well drained sites will convert to aspen here as well, left to break up, softwood returns and favors fir with white pine and spruce scattered. Cedar sites often will return to cedar with some fir and spruce scattered after invasion by willow and balsam poplar, sometimes tamarack the first 80 years. Sometimes the biggest detriment to cedar regeneration is beaver flooding on those low sites. We had 25 acres destroyed by beavers after a harvest. Well, I guess you could say we created habitat for beavers and they really didn't destroy anything. :

I looked at aerial application of fertilizers on forests and most of the nitrogen was lost in a short while by rain into nearby streams and the effects of increased growth were only temporary, lasting up to 3-4 years. Only the dominants benefited immediately, while co-dominants delayed their growth response and suppressed trees where further suppressed. The effects of thinning on increased growth rate lasted 25 years in comparison.

I guess I've gone all over the page with my post here. Let's just say clear cutting and biomass removal has it's place when properly implemented and should be limited to certain sites. It gives more $$ returns per harvest, but yields less volume per time horizon. Less volume because you have to start over, while with a selection method you still have mature trees growing volume and immature ones becoming merchantable because of growing space. Gives you more entries over the time horizon, typically 80 years. Add all the volume from those multiple entries and you have more total volume. It's not because of soil depletion, although I'm sure there is some impact. Multiple entries can have it's side effects to, such as increased soil compaction which also effects soil fertility.