FORESTRY

Forestry is the art, science, and practice of studying and managing forests and plantations, and related natural resources. Silviculture, a related science, involves the growing and tending of trees and forests. Modern forestry generally concerns itself with assisting forests to provide timber as raw material for wood products; wildlife habitat; natural water quality regulation; recreation; landscape and community protection; employment; aesthetically appealing landscapes; and a ‘sink’ for atmospheric carbon dioxide. A practitioner of forestry is known as a forester. Forests have come to be seen as one of the most important components of the biosphere, and forestry has emerged as a vital field of science, applied art, and technology. Foresters may be employed by industry, government agencies, conservation groups, urban parks boards, citizens’ associations, or private landowners. Industrial foresters are predominantly involved in planning the timber harvests and forest regeneration.

WOOD

Wood is a material produced by trees that is stored in the stem(s) and branches just inside the cambial layer (Nieuwenhuis 2010). Trees, of course, produce bark, fruit, leaves, and oxygen that are available outside of the cambial layer and are useful in controlling such things as air temperature and soil erosion, and these too may be of value to society. Since the late 2000s, wood removed from forests for industrial purposes (i.e., the creation of other products such as paper or lumber) was greatest in North America and Europe. However, around the world, variability in the production of wood resources for human consumptive needs is striking  For example, North America and Europe combined produced about 71% of the total industrial round wood in 2005 (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations 2010), most of which was used to make lumber and paper products.  Fuel-wood refers to wood cut into short lengths or chips that is used to generate heat. Wood consumed for fuel-wood purposes was greatest in Africa and Asia, where it is a basic necessity and in high demand. The production of wood for fue-lwood purposes on these two continents accounts for nearly 74% of the total forest extractions (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations 2010). The types of products that can be derived from trees or forests vary widely and can arise from wood or from roots, leaves, bark, or plants and animals that depend on the existence of the trees. The products range from chemicals and tissue to lumber and the plants and animals that are intimately tied to the existence of forest vegetation. Given uncertainties in the price of petroleum-based products today, options are also being explored for deriving liquid fuels from whole trees. Products such as wood can be an integral part of a management process that produces refined goods

Forest products here include standing timber and logs, solidwood products (lumber and panels), and fiber products (paper and paperboard). This article describes methods used to model stumpage supply and the markets for logs and processed forest products, the results of empirical studies of demand and supply elasticities, and the nature of forest sector models that link these market components. Stumpage supply models originate primarily from intertemporal utility maximization structures, demand and supply for processed products from cost or profit function analyses. Estimates of short-run own-price elasticities for demand and supply of stumpage are predominantly inelastic. Long-run supply estimates are more elastic due to silvicultural investment options. Short-run product elasticities vary widely with substitution options but are also largely inelastic. Forest products sector models can be classed as ‘static’ or ‘dynamic,’ based on their equilibrium solution processes and the ways in which current and expected future market adjustments impact current period market behavior. In applications, the model groups differ markedly in treatment of timber harvest and allocation of harvest to the forest inventory, investment in silviculture and product processing, linkage of forestry and other related sectors such as agriculture, and in their flexibility for policy analysis.

Wastes from Forestry/Wood Industries

The forest-products industry based on the use of wood as raw materials, for example, lumber, furniture, paper products, and pulp, can be divided into (1) primary wood-products industry (from lumber production to the manufacture of finished products (Burton et al., 2003; Pentti et al., 2002); and (2) the value-added or secondary forest-products industry processing raw or semi-processed materials (e.g., production of pallets and light furniture), both generating large amounts of wood wastes, that is, unsuitable material for the production of wood products, including also low-quality raw material (e.g., bark, small chips, saw dust, wood edges) (Murphy et al., 2007; Top, 2015). Wood wastes, classified into bark, coarse and fine waste, are potential biomass resources (Skog et al., 2011) for either (1) energy applications (combustion in wood burners or larger biomass boilers to cover energy demands of homes or industrial enterprises; at an industrial scale, forest residues and waste wood can be converted into advanced biofuels or intermediates through various thermochemical pathways (http://biofuelstp.eu/forest.html); or (2) non-energy applications (production of composite boards and wood pulp; land reclamation; animal bedding material; landscaping; agricultural mulch; and landfilling (Murphy et al., 2007; Top, 2015).

Information sourced