Eucalyptus: Planted Forests, World Forests & Global Timber Supply (I)

Planted Eucalyptus Forests: A Sustainable Pathway for Global Timber Supply & Forest Preservation

Gustavo Iglesias Trabado
GIT Forestry Consulting SL - Consultoría y Servicios de Ingeniería Agroforestal - www.git-forestry.com - EUCALYPTOLOGICS

Planted forests have significantly expanded around the World in the last five decades. This trend has meant, among many other effects, a huge shift of supply sources for raw industrial roundwood, from previously existing forests of many types to purpose made timber crops. That trend has especially been intense for those industrial uses requiring vast amounts of raw timber as base resource.

Among the favoured tree species for the establishment of planted forests in the five continents, the very efficient eucalypts, fast growing, adaptable to many environments from arid lands to tropical forests, able to supply wood of great quality for several current and future industrial lines, and increasingly domesticated, have been paramount. And they will keep being, year by year as they become a high yield and reasonable investment option for many in many places.

However, if you have never been into a planted Eucalyptus forest, and even if you have been, you may yet have a different perception on these trees and their cultivation. Not surprising, considering the continued spread of myths and fables about their negative effects on different pieces of the environment.

One thing is absolutely certain about this all. Without yet considering the amount, type, permanence and reversibility of such hypothetical impacts... these cannot happen wherever those trees are not cultivated. So, the significance of their cultivated area compared to other forest types around the world is a good starting point to understand why many of the statements you may read or hear against these trees and those who benefit from their wonderful properties... coming from varied sources are simply... incoherent, illogical, exaggerated, biased... or intentionally misleading.

Eucalyptus Planted Forests: Key Data on Current Cultivation Area, contribution to Sustainable Wood Production & Sustainable Forest Management Certification Status. (Click image to enlarge)

So, today we bring you some good quality data depicting the significance of Eucalyptus planted forests on the total World Forest Resource, from the points of view of a) Cultivated area versus other Forest areas; b) Industrial Roundwood Output versus that from other Forest areas; and c) Status of Forest Certification as Sustainable according to the two predominant schemes currently common around the world: the dominant PEFC and the also noticeable FSC.

It is by the understanding of these basic figures and what they mean from a spatial and temporal point of view that you will be able to sort out grain from straw, and you will be able to classify any author claiming against these trees into any of the previously mentioned categories. Maybe also this way, you are also able to provide others with a sound knowledge on the cost/benefit ratio of these and other planted trees being the current and future source of most of the organic, renewable and recyclable materials made from wood that you use today and will keep using tomorrow, while you help and contribute, as these planted trees already do, to the preservation of our ecosystems and their functions at a global scale. There is very little doubt that these and other planted forests are some of the best Vital Allies of the Planet available today, and tomorrow.

Did you know that...

- Planted forests, meaning some 2% of global land area, provide, among other goods and services, +70% of the yearly global harvests of industrial raw timber?

- Planted Eucalyptus forests mean considerably less than 1% of global land area, but produce organic materials for over 130 different products you and several other million beings may use everyday without noticing?

- From the whole amount of planted Eucalyptus forests and the industrial timber sustainably harvested from them every year, only a fraction is bio-refined by the global pulp and paper industry?

- Many planted Eucalyptus forests do not even exist for a Productive Function, but are part of Protective Planted Forests helping to quickly improve endangered or restore degraded soils, to prevent erosion and loss of agricultural productivity, or as beneficial complements for other farming activities?

- Both the PEFC and the FSC, plus other organizations, have already certified millions of hectares of timber productive Planted Eucalyptus Forests as Sustainably Managed?

Interesting eh? No doubt, these trees are one of the most diverse and useful plants we human beings have domesticated in the last 200 years since their discovery in Australia. And they will keep being, you like them, or not.

Also at Eucalyptologics...

Eucalyptus universalis: Global Eucalyptus Map 2008

Planted Forests: Food for Thought

Planted Forests: Vital Allies of the Planet

World Forestry Congress 2009 - Planted Forests Session

Charta Eucalyptica Brasiliensis: State of the Art 2008

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© 2007-2010 Gustavo Iglesias Trabado. Please contact us if you want to use all or part of this text and photography elsewhere. We like to share, but we do not like rudeness.

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The EntMoot, in 10 images: XXIII IUFRO World Congress, Seoul 2010

Forest Scientists gather in Korea for the XXIII IUFRO World Congress

XXIII IUFRO World Congress - Inaugural Tree Planting Ceremony

XXIII IUFRO World Congress - Opening the International Trade & Exhibition on Forest Science & Technology. 68 Governmental Agencies, Forest Education & Research Organizations & Forest Industry Firms around the world stand in Seoul.

XXIII IUFRO World Congress - Inaugural Plenary Session by Korean Poet Ko Un

XXIII IUFRO World Congress - Forest Discussion at Sub-Plenary Sessions, outlining the key topics on each of the 9 main Congress Themes.

XXIII IUFRO World Congress - Forest Specialists share & discuss at the Technical Sessions during 943 oral presentations of the latest advances of Forest Science in issues related to Climate Change, Biodiversity, Environmental Services, Sustainable Production, Emerging Technologies, Forest Health, Social Forestry & Environmental Security.

XXIII IUFRO World Congress - The New Lights of International Forest Science, the impressive amount of 1153 posters displaying the latest advances in Forest Research around the world.

XXIII IUFRO World Congress - The Decission Board of IUFRO, the equivalent to the "United Nations of Forest Research", meets in Seoul to review recent activities & establish the new directions for future work. Representatives of +100 countries around the World participate of this Congress and its activities.

XXIII IUFRO World Congress - Over 2,500 foresters, forest scientists, forest policy makers, forest educational organizations & forest science students from the 5 continents have gathered in Korea to share the results of their research & knowledge and to discuss how to build the Forests of the Future.

XXIII IUFRO World Congress - The Bibimbap ("Korean Mixed Rice") Symbolic Performance, with all its ingredients conveniently placed in the same bowl, ready for mixing & feeding Forest Research around the World. (If you wonder, yes, they also mixed those in the picture & later ate them for lunch!).

XXIII IUFRO World Congress - The Drums of Forest Science beat in Seoul, and from Korea, their sound is to be heard worldwide.

What is IUFRO?

Watch this video describing the role of the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) as Global Stewards of Forest Science and Research.

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© 2007-2010 Gustavo Iglesias Trabado. Please contact us if you want to use all or part of this text and photography elsewhere. We like to share, but we do not like rudeness.

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Arsonists blamed on 2 Firefighter Deaths in Spain

Two Spanish Firefighters Murdered on Duty in Night Forest Fire in Galicia

Last night we lost two brave young men in Galicia, Firefighter Julio Martínez Da Silva, 27 & Firefighter Rodrigo Amo González, 35, while on duty as part of a shock force to assess the spread of a night fire starting some minutes earlier in Fornelos de Montes, Pontevedra.

Fornelos de Montes Killer forest fire location and Fire Risk Charts for Atlantic Iberia, courtesy Consellería do Medio Rural - Xunta de Galicia & Instituto de Metereología, Government of Portugal (Click image to enlarge)

According to Fornelos de Montes local authorities, there had been previous arson attempts during the day in the area where the night fire started.

Two Firefighters die on duty in Galicia

Spanish National TV early morning report on Killer Fire at Fornelos de Montes (Pontevedra, Galicia, Spain). Courtesy RadioTelevisión Española (Click play to watch the video)

After painstaking efforts during the night, the Fornelos de Montes fire was finally controlled during Friday morning and put out without further casualties or property damage after burning some 100 hectares of scrubland and sparse tree cover.

Night fire causing 2 Firefighter Deaths in Spain, likely intentional

Spanish National TV afternoon report from Fornelos de Montes, after Galician Regional Government public condemnation of arson criminal acts. Courtesy RadioTelevisión Española (Click play to watch the video)

From here, our deepest condolences to the families of the fallen heroes, and our support to the more than 6,000 Galician Firefighters & Spanish Army Brigadists deployed in Galicia bravely risking their lives each day to protect us all. May the murderers be hunt and brought to Court.

Galician Government Condemns Forest Fire Criminals

(Click image to watch video, courtesy RTVE)

"We will keep working to hunt arsonists. It is a priority to put an end to these criminal activities in our forestlands, and we will increase all efforts so the fight against arsonists keeps being implacable. Forest criminal actions must be detected and their authors must be persecuted and convicted. We will keep working in this Battle against Fire." - Alberto Nuñez Feijoo, Galicia's President.

Galician Government reports criminal fire ignited in 3 simultaneous seats

State Attorneys to Prosecute Environmentalist Crimes

"I do not doubt for a second that the National Environment Attorney Office works daily, 365 days per year, to arrest and convict whenever possible, those responsible of environmentalist crime, which includes forest fires" - Elena Espinosa, Minister of Environment, Rural Affairs & Fisheries, Government of Spain.

Useful Resources: Forest Fire Remote Sensing

You can review online the current state of Global Forest Fires using FAO's Natural Resources & Environment Department interactive tool GFIMS - Global Fire Information Management System, developed with NASA's MODIS Satellite Warning System. Silvicultor has kindly placed a permanent GFIMS Forest Fire Detection Satellite Eye on Northwestern Spain & Northern Portugal at Aula Silvicultura in case you want to track forest fire events in Iberia.

You can also find at NASA's online platform an archive of 10-day Global Fire Maps generated using the MODIS Rapid Response System, displaying fire locations to represent the current global fire activity across the world.

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Cold hardy Eucalyptus forestry in Galicia (V): Biomass in 100 months!

Eucalyptus nitens: Biomass & Bioenergy woods from Galician planted forests (I)

Gustavo Iglesias Trabado
GIT Forestry Consulting SL - Consultoría y Servicios de Ingeniería Agroforestal - www.git-forestry.com - EUCALYPTOLOGICS

At this stage, if you have not heard about the new trends of forestry and planted forests as Vital Allies of the Planet to help tackle the effects of climate change, you are not fully aware that the range of expected products and services sourced from them is way beyond of the purely physically tangible timber. These are times where positive externalities are being incorporated into forestry businesses at unprecedented scale.

Besides their role as carbon sinks, happening no matter what and regardless of the final destination of the organically grown, renewable and recyclable timber produced in planted forests, these days are the days of renewable biofuels, and timber, as the first fuel (firewood) ever used by human beings, is one of the familiar pieces of the puzzle in development.

Fig. 1: 100 month old organic & renewable Eucalyptus woody biomass for energy harvested in Galicia (NW Spain). Also known as firewood harvest trial! (Click image to enlarge)

The main difference from days past to nowadays is that the occasional small scale firewood harvest for domestic use or charcoal is no longer the objective. The objective now is bioenergy production facilities using woody biomass as fuel, and refined technologies to convert such biomass into heat and/or electricity. This means, besides other less efficient fuel sources, the achievement of a stable and sustainable feedstock of woody biomass for energy sourced from purpose made energy crops. Why? Because that way it is relatively predictable, be it for volumes and allocation of biomass supply, delivery timings to bio-energy power plant, expected power output, and costs of heat or electricity unit produced using this renewable and carbon neutral non fossil fuel.

For such scenarios, the existence of trees able to be cultivated in short rotations, with fast enough growth rates to produce a noticeable output of timber (or, if you rather, calories stored in timber) per cultivated hectare, with predictable yield outputs, as low production costs as possible for the timber crop, and as high ROI as possible for timber crop investment, is paramount.

Fig. 2: 100 month old Eucalyptus nitens woody biomass before harvesting. You can see the trees in their whole size, and also a happy forester seeing they behave as expected in fast growth terms for this site! (Click image to enlarge)

So, which multi-purpose trees can have the best potential as woody biomass sources in humid Atlantic climates? Those more efficiently already converting light, water and nutrients into organic, renewable and predictable timber, from sea level to the snowlands. And certainly, very few other than plantation grown Eucalyptus can well match that description!

With a wide scale tree cultivation history spanning over 50 years, Northwestern & Northern Spain are some of the most productive timber hubs in Atlantic Europe, precisely thanks to Eucalyptus. In fact, Galician Eucalyptus timber harvest output currently means 1 out of each 4 logs harvested yearly in Spain.

Fig. 3: Tree Inventory detail showing Eucalyptus nitens fast growth potential (+20 cm DBH- Diameter at Breast Height, 100th month). (Click image to enlarge)

Over 10 different eucalypt species are grown as timber crops in the area, and the range of products sourced locally from these trees is as wide as high quality Eucalyptus solidwood for carpentry and furniture making, raw material for board and panel manufacture, or excellent raw timber for cellulosic pulp and paper production.

Eucalyptus timber use as biomass for energy is something not that new wherever these trees are cultivated. Each of the industrial lines mentioned do already use eucalypt wood as carbon neutral fuel. In fact, all timber based industries do convert part of the incoming raw timber into fuel, be it as non useful for sawmilling pieces of logs, be it as non suitable for board or panel fractions going to the co-generation boiler, be it as suboptimal for pulping fractions chipped and fed to the stove. In addition, some of them also use organic residues from the industrial process, rich in those chemical compounds of wood non useful for pulp, as biofuel. So, in varied forms, wherever an eucalypt based timber industry exists, Eucalyptus biomass is already used as biofuel. A renewable one.

Fig. 4: Sliced Eucalyptus nitens firewood log piece at DBH in its 100th month. Forester boot as size reference. (Click image to enlarge)

So, do Eucalyptus bio-energy crops already exist? Surely, in many places. In as many ways as silvicultural management regimes are applied to these planted tree crops. The diversity of possibilities is large. And the implications of each management regime producing biomass for energy are also diverse.

Purely 100% biomass for energy Eucalyptus timber crops are possible. Different designs for planting and plantation tending are possible. Combined pulpwood plus biomass for energy Eucalyptus timber crops are also possible. In fact, those are the most common variant of Eucalyptus cultivation in planted forests around the world. Combined multi-product planted forests yielding Eucalyptus biomass for bioenergy, plus logs for pulpwood or chipwood for pulping or board industries, plus high value logs for solidwood or veneer lines are also possible!

Fig. 5: Chart for Eucalyptus nitens dry biomass fraction weight and output estimation, developed by our good friend César Pérez Cruzado & collaborators (UXFS-USC) after much tree sampling and much wood laboratory work.

All of them are possible, and they all have their basement on two basic concepts. The first one is simple and well visible in the photo-thread of this article: the trees can grow very fast, shortening production cycles and ROI periods whatever the industrial line the main product of the planted Eucalyptus forest aims to.

The second concept is as old as forestry and the refining of silviculture of planted Eucalyptus forests: you can manage the stocking of your trees along their cultivation cycle in order to be able to extract timber from your tree stand along time, and at once letting the remaining trees achieve whichever desired log size and properties you may want. And, the good part, using the right tools developed by foresters, you can estimate and predict which are the amounts of raw timber, or its equivalent as any product (be it volumes of woodchips, pulp or board; be it dry weight of biomass in each of its fractions; be it power output of each of those fractions per tree or per hectare depending on when they are harvested... whatever necessary!!).

Fig. 6: Eucalyptus nitens Stand Density Management Diagram (SDMD) for Galicia (NW Spain). A very handy tool to estimate overall timber volume in a given plantation for a whole range of tree stocking after basic tree measuring. Also developed by Pérez Cruzado, Rodríguez Soalleiro & collaborators (UXFS-USC).

So, if you put in the same mix a given suitable timber tree, relatively well transferred experience in its cultivation for a given area, a wide array of visible different and diverse ways to grow the trees for different products but always with biomass and bioenergy as part of the equation, good forestry science based knowledge of the potential yield of these trees both from the point of view of productivity per surface unit regardless of how they are grown, and good forestry science based knowledge of the yield of the trees as producers of different fractions of biomass for energy... and you add to that some logistics for delivered cost of supply... and some biomass boiler parameters...

Exactly: you can predict bioenergy outputs from this type of woody biomass for a whole region... and their cost depending where the boilers are! Neat, eh? Galicia rocks!

Also at Eucalyptologics...

Cold hardy Eucalyptus timber production in Galicia (NW Spain)

Cold hardy Eucalyptus frost damage assessment

Eucalyptus in the Snow: Pictorial views of cold hardy eucalypt plantations in NW Spain

Natural Regeneration in Eucalyptus: The odd case of coppicing E. nitens

Eucalyptus hybrids: Phenology of E. globulus and E. nitens in Galicia (NW Spain)

Eucalyptus at Full Gallop: When spring comes

Eucalyptus Silviculture: Making more Money Grow on Trees

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Contact GIT Forestry Consulting - Eucalyptologics

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© 2007-2010 Gustavo Iglesias Trabado. Please contact us if you want to use all or part of this text and photography elsewhere. We like to share, but we do not like rudeness.

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