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
Working Paper: Opportunities for Application of Traditional Ecological Knowledge in Restoration of Pinyon-Juniper Ecosystems of the Colorado Plateau
Pinyon-juniper (PJ) savannas, woodlands, and shrublands of the Colorado Plateau are of major importance, not only as habitat for plant and animal species, but also to local human communities for goods, services, and cultural values, both traditionally and contemporarily. Although an exhaustive ethnobotanical analysis of the flora of the Colorado Plateau has not been conducted, general descriptions of uses and values of more common species in these PJ ecosystems are found in the published literature. Chronic drought, wildfire, and severe insect outbreaks, along with anthropogenic stressors such as intensive livestock grazing, clearing, modifications of fire regimes, and spread of invasive species, have substantially altered ecosystem structure and function. In response, public land managers have called for renewed focus on pinyon-juniper conservation and restoration. Successful management of these systems will target actions that assist recovery of ecological function while simultaneously engaging local human communities, particularly Indigenous nations, that have strong, multigenerational connections to the ecosystem.
Positive drought feedbacks increase tree mortality risk in dry woodlands of the US Southwest
Global increases in temperature and aridity are driving extreme droughts that severely impact dryland ecosystems operating at the margins of plant tolerance. Focusing on the pinyon–juniper woodlands of the US Southwest, researchers used a long-term monitoring network to analyze how recurrent droughts influence tree mortality. Between 1998 and 2023, tree density and stand basal area declined substantially. Since 2014, tree mortality has outpaced new recruitment, and nearly half of the surviving trees have experienced crown dieback. While tree size influenced environmental responses, and local factors like soil organic matter and mycorrhizal fungi provided a protective buffer, the cumulative stress altered woodland demographics. Consequently, these shifts triggered a 28.2% increase in future mortality risk for surviving trees across species. Recurrent droughts have effectively overcome the ecosystem’s natural resilience, proving that consecutive climate events compound long-term vulnerability rather than allowing the system to stabilize.