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.
Fact Sheet: The Cost of Forest Thinning Operations in the Western United States: A Literature Review
An increase in frequent, catastrophic wildfires is a challenge to forests and communities across the western United States. Forest thinning treatments can reduce the risk of catastrophic fires and improve forest health. However, the cost of treatments varies depending on factors such as slope gradients, small-diameter trees, silvicultural prescriptions, and harvesting systems and methods. Land managers often use thinning treatments as a management approach, and broader knowledge on the productivity and costs of harvesting machinery can assist in their planning efforts.
Special Report: Managed Wildfire: A Research Synthesis and Overview
All wildfires in the United States are managed, but the strategies used to manage them vary by region and season. “Managed wildfire” is a response strategy to naturally ignited wildfires; it does not prioritize full suppression and allows the fire to fulfill its natural role on the landscape, meeting objectives such as firefighter safety, resource benefit, and community protection. This wildfire management strategy can be effective for reducing tree densities, landscape homogeneity, fuel load continuity, and future fire behavior, while also working to reintroduce fire to fire-prone ecosystems. Research on managed wildfire has expanded significantly in recent years. This synthesis is designed to distill the current science on managed wildfire to foster a wide discussion of the strategy among managers, practitioners, and the knowledgeable public.
Journal Article: Climate influences on future fire severity: a synthesis of climate‑fire interactions and impacts on fire regimes, high‑severity fire, and forests in the western United States
Increases in fire activity and changes in fire regimes have been documented in recent decades across the western United States. Climate change is expected to continue to exacerbate impacts to forested eco-systems by increasing the frequency, size, and severity of wildfires across the western United States (US). Warming temperatures and shifting precipitation patterns are altering western landscapes and making them more susceptible to high-severity fire. Increases in large patches of high-severity fire can result in significant impacts to landscape processes and ecosystem function and changes to vegetation structure and composition. In this synthesis, we examine the predicted climatic influence on fire regimes and discuss the impacts on fire severity, vegetation dynamics, and the interactions between fire, vegetation, and climate.