Tag: forestry

Winter Walks: Where to Find Maine’s Most Impressive Eastern White Pines

Posted on by Jeff Easterling

moosehorn

Maine’s state tree is a real beauty year-round, but the Eastern White Pine really shines in winter, holding onto its evergreen needles even when many of its neighbors are bare. It’s easy to see why it’s such a popular choice as a Christmas tree, with its classic conifer shape and full, bushy limbs. It’s an important part of local ecosystems, too, providing food and shelter for a wide variety of species during even the harshest winters. It might be cold outside, but it’s still a lovely time to take a brisk walk and enjoy the sights and smells of these beautiful trees, which grow all over the state.

Nobody is really keeping official tabs on the tallest trees in Maine; state officials maintain a registry of big trees, but it’s not updated very often, and residents submit their own reports to add to it. But it does note the existence of an impressive Eastern White Pine standing 120 feet tall with a circumference of 245 inches and a crown spread of 80 feet located in Morrill, last measured in 2008. This one was nominated for ’national champion’ of big trees.

Many others measuring over 100 feet tall have been celebrated as champion trees in various counties, like a 108-foot Big Tree Contest winner in Sumner. According to the Monumental Trees database, there’s a particularly beautiful specimen located across from the 5 Lakes Lodge in Millinocket, but its height and official girth are unknown.

Of course, Eastern White Pines can be found all over Maine, which provides plenty of fertile, well-drained soil to help the species thrive, not to mention a historic lumber industry maintaining sustainably managed pine forests. The state notes Bearce Lake in the Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuge, Bigelow Preserve Public Lands, Chamberlain Lake Public Lands, Gero Island Public Lands and the Scientific Forest Management Area of Baxter State as prime conservation lands brimming with beautiful white pines.

But if you want to see the tallest Eastern White Pines the East Coast has to offer, you’ll have to venture outside the state a little bit. Pennsylvania’s Cook Forest State Park is home to 110 Eastern White Pines measuring 148 feet or taller, including an incredible ‘Longfellow Pine’ reaching 183 feet 7 inches into the sky. The tallest one of all, the ‘Boogerman Pine,’ is a bit further afield in the Cataloochee Valley of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, reaching an amazing 207 feet.

Image of Bearce Lake via the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

This Week in Wood: Conserving Working Forests Supports Rural Families

Posted on by Jeff Easterling

conserving forests

As we recently reported, the more the public demands wood and other forest products, the more our forests grow – and, as it turns out, that growth supports rural families, too. When terrain for logging disappears due to suburbanization of historically wooded properties, jobs disappear along with it. As The Huffington Post reports, the number of logging jobs has declined dramatically over the last 20 years along with the milling companies that once provided them, leaving vast tracts of forest in the hands of investor groups and private-equity funds.

How those landowners then sell or lease the properties – and two whom – depends on what will net them the greatest profits. That often means tearing down forests to build oversized vacation homes instead of preserving them. A group called The Conservation Fund hopes to change that, and recently purchased 23,053 acres of forest on the borders of New York, Vermont and Massachusetts to help ensure they remain the backbone of the rural economies nearby.

The Conservation Fund has preserved nearly 500,000 acres of privately owned forested land over the last 20 years, through a process known as conservation easement. The fund agrees to buy the land from investors, then adds restrictions to the deeds excluding development. The new terms allow activities like recreation and sustainable logging, where foresters select specific trees to fell and lumbermen like Gale carefully cut them and drag them out. The Conservation Fund then sells the land to new owners, who agree to maintain the easement’s terms of use, and uses proceeds of the sales to create easements in other parts of the country.

…But cities naturally expand over time and zoning policies can, in theory, be changed to accommodate housing that is more affordable. In rural, wooded areas, the gentrification process can be economically devastating. That’s why privately owned forests like the ones the Conservation Fund buys welcome sustainable forestry, which helps clear out dead wood and make the forests less dense. Forestry-related industries currently provide 2.7 million American jobs and contribute $112 billion to the U.S. economy each year, according to the Land Trust Alliance, a conservation group.

Read the rest of this story by Alexander C. Kaufman at The Huffington Post.

High-Tech Tools from The Nature Conservancy Make it Easier to Manage Forests

Posted on by Jeff Easterling
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For decades, the easiest way to manage a forest tree-by-tree has been to simply take a walk through it with a can of spray paint, designating which trees need to come down. While there’s definitely nothing wrong with this old-school approach, The Nature Conservancy is cooking up some new high-tech forestry management tools that make the process a whole lot faster and more accurate. They’re testing their Digital Restoration Guide in Northern Arizona, where a million acres of ponderosa pine forest have burned in catastrophic wildfires over the last fifteen years.

In an interview with TechCrunch, Neil Chapman of The Nature Conservancy explains how digital tools can make it easier for timber managers, conservationists, park services and fire control to keep forests alive and thriving. Workers will still walk (or ride ATVs) around in the forests to get an in-person, up-close look at the trees, but instead of using spray paint, they’ll have a tablet in hand, noting the tree locations with GPS coordinates. The data can be adjusted, archived and sent to harvesters – resulting in a lot less paperwork and other labor on the back end.

forest fires app

This could be especially useful for larger forests, where you might need to keep track of hundreds of thousands of trees every year. In-cab GPS helps wood harvesters make sure they’re using the right treatment in the right location, and track the date, time and location of a tree cut to manage project contracts. In the future, bar codes could be used to follow trees from cut to wood product manufacturing.

It’s a pretty interesting advancement in tech for the industry, and it’ll be cool to see how it develops. Read more details at TechCrunch.

4 Ways Sustainable Forestry Supports The Future of Wood Construction

Posted on by Jeff Easterling

SFI

The international Mass Timber Conference brought global experts in the mass timber industry together in Portland, Oregon this week to discuss how we can increase the use of wood in mid-rise and tall buildings around the world. The conference explored the entire supply chain for innovative wood technologies like cross-laminated timber and laminated veneer lumber. One of the main speakers, Jason Metric of the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), spoke about four ways responsible forestry supports wood construction.

The speech focused on how forest certification can open up global markets in green building, a highly relevant topic for anyone working in the forestry industry today. For anyone who couldn’t be present at the event, SFI has outlined the four ways in a post on Treehugger.com.

The 4 ways in-depth:

1. Ensure the wood products in your construction project – whether small buildings or tall buildings – come from certified, responsible, and legal sources.

Watch architect Michael Green talk about the future of wooden skyscrapers and the importance of sustainable building materials here:

2. In North America, more than 285 million acres/115 million hectares of forests are certified to the Sustainable Forestry Initiative Forest Management Standard and millions more are positively impacted by SFI Fiber Sourcing Standard.

There’s a simple way you can ensure that our forests remain healthy. Look for the SFI® label on any wood, paper and packaging product you purchase. It’s your assurance that what you buy comes from responsibly managed and legal forests.

3. SFI is recognized by LEED and other top green building rating systems.

On April 5, 2016, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) issued a LEED alternative compliance path (ACP) that recognizes wood and paper from the SFI Program as part of an integrated approach to encouraging environmentally responsible forest management and eliminating illegal wood from the building material’s supply chain.

4. Wood is celebrated by leading architects for its beauty, versatility, and renewability.

The 2017 SFI Certified Wood Award, part of the North American Wood Design and Building Awards program, was presented to Hacker, Portland-based architects. The Black Butte Ranch used Sierra Pacific windows and other wood certified to the SFI Standard.

Innovations Set to Help Maine’s Forest Industry Reach New Heights

Posted on by Jeff Easterling

university of maine sustainable forestry

Strong and steady as the towering pines that were once crafted into masts for the British Navy, forestry continues to play a crucial role in Maine’s economy. Visions of evergreen boughs swaying in the wind and impressive lengths of wood shipping downriver have fused to the core of the state’s identity, making it at once a center of industry and home to some of the United States’ most magnificent natural settings. That reputation is set to grow even stronger with a new focus on innovation and collaboration.

A multi-agency team called the Economic Development Assessment Team (EDAT) brought together local, state and federal partners to build a new strategy for the future of Maine’s forest-based economy, bolstering existing industries and helping the state’s rural communities thrive. Released in mid-January, the team’s report identified new markets and ways to diversify to create new jobs, improve infrastructure and support promising new business opportunities.

Wood-engineered products like cross-laminated tiber are mentioned as one of those opportunities, as use of the materials catch on for new large-scale wooden architecture projects around the world. EDAT notes that Maine is uniquely positioned to become a leader in this emerging industry.

$1.5 million in funding for forest industries announced with the EDAT report join a $4.4 million investment for statewide economic initiatives in Maine from the Economic Development Agency, including funding for Biobased Maine to market the state’s forest resources, and a $3.3 million grant from the Department of Defense for the UMaine Forest Bioproducts Research Institute for Wood to Jet Fuel.

It’s an exciting time of growth for Maine’s forest industry, especially on the heels of NeLMA’s merger with the Northern Softwood Lumber Bureau, which will extend NeLMA programs across the Great Lakes area and welcome new wood species like Red Pine.

Image via The University of Maine

Celebrating Eastern White Pine: Maine’s Enduring Love for Its State Tree

Posted on by Jeff Easterling

forests for maine's future

Spotting towering Eastern White Pine trees in the forests and on rocky outcroppings, New England’s first settlers must have marveled at their majestic heights. At the time, the trees had never been touched, growing for hundreds of years until they soared to 200 feet into the sky. The settlers saw in them potential for strong, stable homes – and ultimately used them for virtually everything they made, from eating utensils to masts for ships. The Eastern White Pine even played a central role in the Revolution (perhaps you’ve heard a little story about this tree and the King’s Broad Arrow.)

Mast-suitable virgin pines didn’t last long – it only took thirty years or so through the mid 1800’s to wipe out nearly all of Maine’s tallest white pines. But the tree remained a symbol for Maine’s early prosperity, so much so that the fledgling state put an image of it on its seal and deemed itself “The Pine Tree State.” The white pine cone and tassel is even Maine’s official state ‘flower.’

Today, Eastern White Pine remains an integral part of Maine’s industry and identity and the state is the largest producer of white pine lumber in the nation.

“Maine is the home for the largest white pine mill in the U.S. and three of the top five producing individual mills in the northeast,” says Jeff Easterling, president of the Northeastern Lumber Manufacturer’s Association (NeLMA) in an interview with Forests for Maine’s Future. “As for the rest of the country, only North Carolina and Wisconsin have mills that produce eastern white pine, but low volumes compared to the northeast.”

Mixed pine and oak forests still represent about 25 percent of the timberland acres in southern Maine, and cover about 700,000 acres state-wide. Careful attention to protective forestry methods have helped the species flourish; Eastern White Pine responds very well to shelterwood management, in which the overstory is thinned so light can get to the forest floor. That helps them reach heights of 100 feet with 27-inch-diameter trunks, perfect for producing beautifully long and stable board feet.

Read more about Eastern White Pine’s relationship to Maine at Forests for Maine’s Future.