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Carbon Storage In Harvested Wood | Earth Wise

September 26, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Trees are an exceedingly important carbon sink on our planet. For this reason, deforestation is a major contributor to climate change. But when trees are harvested for wood products like lumber, much of the carbon in that wood continues to be stored. Even when a wood product is discarded at the end of its useful life, it can keep storing carbon.

Over 90% of new single-family homes in the U.S. are built with wood. Each year, about 400,000 homes, apartment buildings, and other housing units are lost to floods and other natural disasters. Others fall apart from decay or are torn down to be replaced with newer structures. Given how much carbon is stored in houses, it is important to understand what the future trajectory of residential structures will be.

A new study by the USDA Forest Service published in the journal PLOS ONE looks at the future of harvested wood products in residential structures. According to the study, wood products in these structures will continue to increase the country’s carbon storage for the next 50 years.

Even after residential structures reach the end of their useful life and much of the materials end up in landfills (which is typical in this country), the wood products do not immediately release their carbon. It may take decades for that to happen.

The study looked at various scenarios for future home construction. Although housing starts are projected to decline in the future, residential housing and the need to maintain existing structures are projected to continue to increase carbon storage in wood products for the next several decades.

The role of trees as a carbon sink does not end when they are harvested for their wood.

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Carbon Storage in Harvested Wood Products

Photo, posted January 27, 2022, courtesy of Luke McKernan via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Turning Wood Into Plastic | Earth Wise

May 4, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Plastic pollution is particularly pernicious because plastics can take hundreds of years to degrade in the environment. For this reason, researchers across the globe search for ways to shift from petrochemical plastics to ones that are biodegradable.

Producing biodegradable plastics is challenging both from the standpoint of the methods needed and from the results obtained. Producing them often requires toxic chemicals and can be very expensive. The materials that emerge often do not have the durability and strength of conventional plastics and can be unstable when exposed to moisture.

Researchers at the Yale School of the Environment have developed a process of decomposing the porous matrix of natural wood into a slurry that can be formed into a biodegradable plastic. The material shows high mechanical strength, stability when holding liquids, and is resistant to the effects of ultraviolet light. Along with all these favorable properties, the material can be recycled or safely biodegraded in the natural environment.

The slurry mixture is created by taking wood powder – a processing residue usually discarded in lumber mills – and deconstructing it with a biodegradable and recyclable solvent. The resulting mixture has a high solid content and high viscosity and can be casted and rolled without breaking.

The researchers conducted a comprehensive life cycle assessment to test the environmental impacts of the bioplastic compared with conventional plastics. Sheets of it were buried in soil and observed to fracture after two weeks and completely degrade after three months. The material can also be broken back down into the slurry by mechanical stirring.

The remaining topic to investigate is the potential impact on forests if the manufacturing of this bioplastic is scaled up.

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Turning wood into plastic

Photo, posted October 12, 2016, courtesy of the US Forest Service via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Cloning Ancient Redwoods

January 30, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

During the 19th and 20th centuries, many of the world’s largest and oldest tress were cut down for their lumber. Some of these coast redwoods were 3,000 years old and measured 35 feet in diameter.

Today, giant stumps of these ancient redwoods dot the landscape from Oregon to northern California and are a remnant of the old-growth forest that once stretched across much of the Pacific Northwest.

An organization called the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive is dedicated to reestablishing ancient redwood forests to help combat climate change. Coastal redwoods are not only huge but can grow an average of 10 feet a year. One of these enormous trees can sequester 250 tons of carbon dioxide over its lifetime, more than 200 times the amount for an average tree.

While many experts thought that the giant stumps were lifeless, arborists at Archangel collected DNA from the stumps of five giant coast redwoods, all larger than the largest tree living today. They then used this genetic material to grow dozens of saplings, which are clones of the ancient trees, in a process that takes about two-and-a-half years.

To date, the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive has planted nearly 100 of these saplings in the Eden Project garden in Cornwall, England, a couple of hundred in Oregon, and most recently, has planted 75 in the Presidio National Park in San Francisco.

According to arborists at the nonprofit organization, these saplings have extraordinary potential to purify our air, water, and soil for generations to come. Their hopes are that the new San Francisco ‘super grove’ will be allowed to grow unmolested by manmade or natural disasters and thus propagate forever.

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Arborists Have Cloned Ancient Redwoods From Their Massive Stumps

Photo, posted April 8, 2013, courtesy of Michael Balint via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Migrating Trees

July 11, 2017 By EarthWise

The changing climate is having a marked effect on forests in this country. In particular, trees along the U.S. eastern seaboard are changing their range as they slowly seek to escape rising temperatures.

[Read more…] about Migrating Trees

Saving Borneo’s Forest

July 3, 2017 By EarthWise

Borneo is the third-largest island in the world, home to part of Indonesia, part of Malaysia, and the small sultanate of Brunei. It is also home to the oldest forest on earth – 130 million years old – which is more than twice as old as the Amazon rain forest.

Dying California Trees

December 16, 2016 By EarthWise

California’s trees are dying. According to the U.S. Forest Service, more than five years of drought in California has left 102 million dead trees across 7.7 million acres of forest. In fact, 62 million trees have died this year alone – a 100% increase from 2015.

Small Forests And Climate

October 26, 2016 By WAMC WEB

Trees are the number one way in which carbon can be removed from the atmosphere and stored in vegetation over the long term. A single tree can absorb CO2 at a rate of 48 pounds per year. Because of this, the carbon footprints of 18 average Americans can be neutralized by one acre of hardwood trees. And it has been found that managed forests accumulate more carbon per acre than unmanaged forests.

Recycled Plastic Lumber

July 20, 2016 By WAMC WEB

One of the most notable success stories in recycling is that of structural plastic lumber. The material is mostly polyethylene reinforced with stiff plastics or recycled composites. Made from milk containers, coffee cups, and other recycled plastics, structural plastic lumber is lighter than steel, longer-lasting than natural lumber and strong enough to support 120-ton locomotives.