Chip-and-Ship Project
A pilot project led by ERI’s professor Han-Sup Han and research associate Jeff Halbrook has the potential to unlock a critical bottleneck in forest restoration and wildfire prevention efforts across northern Arizona.
The pilot project tested the logistics and efficacy of chipping and shipping wood products via railway transportation. The goal is to expand forest product markets domestically and internationally. If successful, the project will create markets for restoration byproducts, like boards, shavings, sawdust, and wood chips from small-diameter trees, and protect communities from catastrophic wildfire and post-fire flooding by speeding forest restoration efforts in Arizona.
The first phase of the project took place at Camp Navajo over the course of eight days in August 2019. It included chipping 1,150 tons of small-diameter logs extracted from forest restoration projects like the Four Forest Restoration Initiative, which has struggled to find markets for the low-value wood removed from its thinning efforts. The wood chips were then loaded onto 58 shipping containers and transported to South Korea via railway and cargo ships.
A report on findings was released December 2019, and can be accessed here. For more information, contact Director of Forest Operations and Biomass Utilization Dr. Han-Sup Han at Han-Sup.Han@nau.edu.
Read more about the project in the news.
Chip-and-Ship Fact Sheet
Chip-and-Ship: Technical Report
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