We must face facts - Logging is part of the solution

[nwdiver]

I thought there was already a thread about this but I was unable to find it;

It's hard to think of an area where there is more cognitive dissonance within the environmental community than when it comes to harvesting timber. Tesla has caught a lot of flak for the fact they're cutting down a forest to build their Berlin factory but the forest they're removing is a tree farm. Trees being grown for the purpose of being cut down and processed as timber.

Since trees have have begun to be seen as part of the solution to climate change (grossly exaggerated IMHO) cutting them down has begun to be seen as part of the problem. But far from it timber harvesting can be a YHUGE part of the solution provided that you're not removing a virgin forest. Forests burn at part of the natural cycle... you know what doesn't necessarily burn? A house. Sure... house fires happen but they're generally not seen as an ecological necessity.

If you want to use trees to remove carbon from the atmosphere having a plan to harvest those trees as timber really needs to be part of the plan. Habitat restoration is great too.... it's just FAR less effective if the goal is removing carbon.

The harvesting of a tree farm needs to be viewed for what it really is. The carbon sequestered in those trees is being safely secured as timber and the land is being prepared for the planting of more trees. And from an economic perspective increasing the supply of lumber will decrease the pressure on pristine forests that we DO need to protect.

 

[ladysbff]

Hear, hear. I learned about the carbon sequestering benefits of dedicated tree farming in high school almost 18 years ago. From a logical standpoint, we've removed trillions of tons of sequestered carbon from the Earth (oil, coal), makes sense that we need to put it back into long term storage.

Do you think there is a main reason for the cognitive dissonance? Lack of education? Environmental virtue signaling?

 

[CyberGus]

The Berlin gigafactory will ultimately remove more CO2 than a few acres of trees ever could.

 

[nwdiver]

Do you think there is a main reason for the cognitive dissonance? Lack of education? Environmental virtue signaling?

I think they just see logging as logging and these trees can take over 30 years to reach maturity. If you grew up with a forest and one day it's gone I can certainly see how that would be incredibly jarring. There were several tree farms near where I grew up in WA but I didn't realize they were farms until I was older. I don't think the untrained eye can really tell a tree farm from a forest.

 

[Big Dog]

Hear, hear. I learned about the carbon sequestering benefits of dedicated tree farming in high school almost 18 years ago. From a logical standpoint, we've removed trillions of tons of sequestered carbon from the Earth (oil, coal), makes sense that we need to put it back into long term storage.

Do you think there is a main reason for the cognitive dissonance? Lack of education? Environmental virtue signaling?

IMO, some (many?) are just opposed to all development. And then throw in NIMBY'isms.....

 

[SageBrush]

I only know enough about the carbon cycle (and its GHG effect) of harvesting trees and forests to say that it is complicated. Part of the story is that most of the carbon fixation is in the ground so felling a tree leads to carbon release (in the form of methane) from the roots.

I tend to think it true that tree farms for industry are about GHG neutral

 

[nwdiver]

I tend to think it true that tree farms for industry are about GHG neutral

Not sure how that would be possible; If a truck hauls away 25 tons of timber... that mass came from somewhere. A good percentage of it is carbon.

Eventually those trees would die in a fire or die and decay. In either case the majority of sequestered carbon would be freed. If they're used to produce lumber the carbon has a higher probability of being sequestered for a longer period of time. Additionally they will be replaced by faster growing younger trees.

 

[CyberGus]

All I know is:

1. The atmosphere of Mars is 95% CO2
2. There are no trees on Mars

Therefore, CO2 kills trees.

 

[mfel]

I don't think it is quite that simple. If the goal is to suck maximum CO2 out of the atmosphere at the fastest rate, that is, maximum sequestration per acre per year, I would say in that current forestry practices are probably not ideal. Granted, I am not a forestry or ecology expert, but I do live up here in the PacNW and have watch trees and cutting over a few decades.

If we take leaf cover as indication of how much CO2 can be turned into mass, then a youngish forest is probably best. Young trees whose canopy covers all available ground, all struggling against each, all rapidly growing vertically. So forests that are perhaps a couple of decades old given current practices/ecology up here. That is the time they are maximizing their CO2 uptake.

I would think that sequestration rate would continue to remain high for quite a long time, many, many decades, as the young trees turn into big trees. The bio mass of mature forests up here is absolutely insane. That rate would roll over after a long time, 100+ years maybe (WAG), and the time it becomes flat steady state (0 net CO2 sequestered) is probably at least couple of centuries.

Harvesting that forest does remove the mass in the trees, but the newly planted trees would absolutely not be able to remove CO2 from the atmosphere at anywhere near the rate as the forest that it replaced. So the rate of sequestration per acre per year would experience a huge immediate drop after logging, and take decade or two to return to previous rate.

So does logging help net total CO2 sequestration? Would a say 50 year old forest (about the typical logging cycle up here) replaced with bunch of 6" seedlings suck up as much carbon over the next 50 years as if the original forest was left to age to 100? I would guess no. There's simply not enough biomass being added each year by those baby trees. And, around here, a 100 year old forest is quite young and still rapidly adding biomass.

Following this logic and assumptions, we should log oldest, fully mature, forests! Yeah... no, not much of those left and those are valuable for other reasons. But IMO the current ~<50 year cycle is probably too short. Also note that current clear cutting practice grinds up a huge amount of biomass from leaves and branches too small for lumber. The mass fraction actually moved to long term sequestration isn't that great, and that left over is simply left to rot quickly.

Obviously in other places with other tree species and growth rates, this argument would be completely different. Bamboo for the win?

 

[nwdiver]

Following this logic and assumptions, we should log oldest, fully mature, forests! Yeah... no, not much of those left and those are valuable for other reasons. But IMO the current ~<50 year cycle is probably too short. Also note that current clear cutting practice grinds up a huge amount of biomass from leaves and branches too small for lumber. The mass fraction actually moved to long term sequestration isn't that great, and that left over is simply left to rot quickly.

Obviously in other places with other tree species and growth rates, this argument would be completely different. Bamboo for the win?

Forestry IS a business. If they can get more timber on an average annualized basis by harvesting every century instead of every 50 years that's what they would do. That's one reason I admire how forestry is generally practiced. When your crop takes decades to grow you're in it for the long game.

It looks like ~35 - 40 years is about the right harvest time for most trees... but it's going to vary wildly from species to species.

U.S. Tree Planting for Carbon Sequestration

 

[ladysbff]

Bamboo for the win?

Totally bamboo FTW. Welcome @mfel you've raised some interesting points

https://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/...tration-trees-urban-and-suburban-settings.pdf
Tree age and sequestration rates - only goes up to age 59, could be because it's about urban/suburban trees and they don't live longer than that. Also maybe there is more to the 50 yr vs 100 yr.

Agroforestry Carbon Sequestration Rates - Green Earth Appeal
His research showed that a newly planted tree in the tropics can remove up to 50 kilograms of CO2 from the atmosphere each year during its growth period of 20–50 years; on the other hand, a tree in the temperate regions can take in 13 kilograms.

 

[ladysbff]

IMO, some (many?) are just opposed to all development. And then throw in NIMBY'isms.....

So a combo of environmental virtue signaling and IGMFU?

 

[mfel]

I've interacted with some representatives from the big W corp, and I'm pretty sure they aren't really working on "maximize total lumber productivity no matter the time it takes". They tend to harvest as soon as possible, when the logs are just big enough. Humans and especially business (at least in the US) just can't really operate at multi decade time scale.

Also note for evergreens, a height chart really is not representative to log diameters and total biomass. A doug fir can be 120' tall and still only 18" diameter. Or it can same height and 4' in diameter.

 

[nwdiver]

I've interacted with some representatives from the big W corp, and I'm pretty sure they aren't really working on "maximize total lumber productivity no matter the time it takes". They tend to harvest as soon as possible, when the logs are just big enough. Humans and especially business (at least in the US) just can't really operate at multi decade time scale.

Even 'as soon as possible' is still multiple decades. Once that forest is gone it's gone for >20 years. Perhaps some companies have a more short sighted management but it you can get 100 tons more timber by waiting 5 more years instead of waiting 20 years to get 300 tons.... the math would sure seem to incentivize waiting. If you're at the steep part of the growth curve why cash out?

 

[mfel]

(trying hard to not go down the rabbit hole...)
Because the company might not be around in 5 or 20 years? Lumber companies are in decline in general because they in the past did NOT balance growth with harvesting. I'm actually currently involved in some land where they want to harvest and the sell the property outright afterwards. They'll take money in lieu of harvesting as well (due to other issues, timber not worth it versus cost to access, etc) Isn't that more like strip mining than sustainable farming?

Did you sell some TSLA to buy a Model 3? Same logic I suppose... ;-)

 

[ladysbff]

If you're at the steep part of the growth curve why cash out?

"Creating shareholder value"

A colleague was a senior planner and analyst at W for 20 years. Should I ask? Lol

Humans and especially business (at least in the US) just can't really operate at multi decade time scale.

With the threat of violence and/or generational oppression and/or religion and/or national pride, multi decade time scales can persist... Sagrada Família is still under construction. Humans need strong incentives.

 

[nwdiver]

(trying hard to not go down the rabbit hole...)
Because the company might not be around in 5 or 20 years? Lumber companies are in decline in general because they in the past did NOT balance growth with harvesting. I'm actually currently involved in some land where they want to harvest and the sell the property outright afterwards. They'll take money in lieu of harvesting as well (due to other issues, timber not worth it versus cost to access, etc) Isn't that more like strip mining than sustainable farming?

Did you sell some TSLA to buy a Model 3? Same logic I suppose... ;-)

I guess it would vary by location. In WA the timber companies don't own most of the land. They buy the timber from the state and log it. So the state is really who determines when it's time to offer most of the timber for sale. The state is likely expecting to still be around in 20 years.

 

[AudubonB]

Your question is both interesting and topical, and worthy further discussion. One factor to consider, however, is the use of a harvested tree. You began this thread with the supposition that its mass was destined for house construction, so I’ll take that as a jumping-off board.
First - a positive. To the extent that a structure is what we call “stick-built”, which is nothing pejorative but is how industry describves the prevailing method of home construction in North America, then not only is your conclusion approximately correct BUT it also diminishes the CO2 effect that occurs when concrete is the prevalent material, given the staggeringly high CO2 output of concrete production.
Second - a negative. Much tree-harvesting, most particularly regarding the Grunheide tree farm, if I understand correctly, occurs not for lumber but for pulp - that is, for paper, cardboard and the like. With that end-product, you then have to determine the amount of time the material gets re-used before its captured carbon returns to CO2.

In all situations, however, the material life cycle is long only inform the perspective of human lives. Geologically, this process occurs in the blink of an eye. This matters because the real issue with carbon dioxide emanations is whether they derive from what we conveniently and appropriately call “the carbon cycle”, or from the also appropriately-termed “sequestered carbon”. In the former, vegetative matter grows, extracts CO2 from the atmosphere, dies and returns such CO2. In the latter, industrial processes ===>AND SOME NATURAL ONES, TOO<=== release to the present-day atmosphere CO2 from carbonaceous material that was removed from this cycle aeons ago - when the earth’s entire ecosystem was in a completely different CO2 balance.

Now, understandably and also somewhat correctly, from the standpoint of “today” then the short-term removal from the carbon cycle of every small amount of CO2 is a desirable goal. But the way truly to reverse the problem we have created is to come to proper terms with the extraction of sequestered carbon.

“Natural ones” mentioned above....interesting but not germane here.

 

[SmartElectric]

If anyone is wondering about the length of time fallen trees take to decompose, I have dozens of 140' tall fallen trees in the forest behind my house. In the 15 years we've been in this house, the original fallen trees that were originally on the ground are still on the ground, at about 2/3 of their original girth. The black walnut trees in particular have lost no girth at all, and many still have original bark. I fell a walnut that was shading the area I was going to use to install solar pool heating panels. The wood was cut up and stacked. The pile is nearly identical in size/shape as the day I piled it 15 years ago.

Based on observation, we're talking hundreds of years for wood to release it's carbon back and by that time, the undergrowth has turned into massive trees replacing them. I haven't bothered to back this up with reading scientific literature on the subject, as my eyes provided much of the confidence I have in this process.

 

[ladysbff]

Reference points for those interested..

The Rise of the Wooden Skyscraper

Unlike standard two-by-fours, mass-timber products are made from smaller pieces of wood that are laminated together to create panels up to seven layers thick and up to 64 feet long and eight feet wide—making them ideal for tall buildings. The most established mass-timber product is cross-laminated timber (CLT). The panels are engineered to be pound-for-pound stronger than steel—and at least as fire-resistant. That’s because the panels are so thick that under the stress of fire, typically only the outside layer chars—forming a protective layer for the rest of the member.

Bloomberg - Skyscrapers Made of Wood Are Making a Comeback

Global Tall Timber Projects and Wood Skyscrapers

Sidewalk Labs | Exploration 1: How to design a timber building that can reach 35 stories or more

Sidewalk Labs | Exploration 2: How to design a timber building that’s easy to make in a factory

Google affiliate Sidewalk Labs abruptly abandons Toronto smart city project