| Kisatchie logger
has grant for biomass study Travis Taylor, LSU AgCenter to share $186,473 for brush removal experiments By
Tom Kelly If you had been around the Southern Piney Woods two hundred years or more ago, the forests you saw would have been completely different from the ones that populate our roads and byways today. And if you are fortunate enough to come back in a hundred years or so from now, they likely will be less like what's there today, and more like what they were the first time you saw them, in say, around 1800 when European settlement began to change the landscape. At least, that's one probability which should result as a by-product of an experiment in small tree and brush (biomass) removal and recovery on the 600,000-acre Kisatchie National Forest which sprawls across the interior of Louisiana, covering portions 11 parishes from Vernon in southwest Louisiana, to Webster and Claiborne in North Louisiana near the border with Arkansas. Travis Taylor Logging, Inc., of Goldonna, Louisiana, in cooperation with the LSU School of Renewable Natural Resources, will be using a USDA Forest Service grant of $186,473 to conduct a project on the Kisatchie to determine the most efficient methods of removing woody biomass underbrush, and recovery of the material for multiple commercial uses including marketable wood chips, liquid fuels, and other energy. The grant is one of 20 made nationwide, and one of only three outside the American far west, announced in early June by Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns "to develop innovative uses for woody biomass in national forests as sources of renewable energy and new products. The grants total $4.4 million nationwide, as part of the Healthy Forests Restoration Act. Woody biomass includes tree parts and woody plants, limbs, tops, needles and other woody parts that are "byproducts of ecological restoration and hazardous fuel reduction," the Forest Service states. Frank Yerby, District Ranger for Winn District on the Kisatchie, said the underbrush clearing has two major objectives, one, reducing combustible material near the forest floor which is a fire hazard, and two, over time to assist in bringing the forest back to its native condition before the original forest was removed by clearing for settlement, agriculture and logging for forest products. According to Carl Brevelle, Land Management Planner with the Kisatchie at the Pineville, Louisiana headquarters, the Winn District includes approximately 78,000 acres with soil characteristics most suited to longleaf pine. Of the entire 600,000 acre Kisatchie National Forest, 440,000 acres or about two-thirds of the total, favor longleaf restoration, Brevelle said. Restoration of longleaf culture is already underway on much of the Kisatchie, including several tracts along U.S. Highway 84 in the Winn District. Ranger Yerby said the restoration project will continue over time, resulting eventually in an ecosystem resembling the native plant and animal populations of 200 years ago. Because of longleaf restoration already accomplished, Yerby said, plant varieties on the forest floor are returning to a mixture which favors browse for turkey, deer, and other wildlife. "I live in the Forest," Yerby said, "and I'm beginning to hear quail again." Restoration is also favorable to Red Cockaded Woodpecker, Yerby said. After the native longleaf forests of the 1800s were taken down in the great logging boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, reforestation throughout the south was primarily with the faster growing loblolly varieties, with some shortleaf in certain areas. The longleaf grows slowly, and in its native condition thrived with periodic fires on the forest floor with leafy hardwoods in control, leaving the open "park like" appearance of long-stemmed trees with the grasses and leafy flowering plants close to the ground favored by deer, turkey, and quail. In today's forestry, depending upon location, landowner goals, and other factors, control of underbrush is achieved with mechanical cutting and chipping, such as the program contemplated by the Taylor Logging-LSU AgCenter project, or with fire, or chemical herbicides, or a combination of the methods. Ranger Yerby points out that controlled burning is used on the Kisatchie in areas where the condition of the forest allows, and danger to private property outside the forest is not endangered. Environmental and public relations concerns limit chemical control. On certain areas of the Kisatchie where the hardwood understory has become established, mechanical cutting continues to be the preferred method, as the first step toward longleaf restoration. Dr. Niels deHoop, Associate Professor at the Louisiana Forest Products Development Center, LSU School of Renewable Natural Resources in Baton Rouge, said burning restrictions and smoke management problems limit prescribed burning. "If we are going to prevent disastrous fires in Louisiana, we need to look to mechanical fuel reduction operations that eliminate much of the underbrush and understory biomass that can carry a fire," deHoop said. "But mechanical fuel reduction operations are expensive. They hundreds to thousands of dollars per acre." Dr. deHoop will lead a study program on the Kisatchie brush clearing operation conducted by the Taylor Logging company, to determine the most efficient methods of removal, and also for conversion of the biomass to marketable products, including chips. Travis Taylor, owner of Taylor Logging, is also an investor in the Vanguard BioSynFuels company at Pollock, Louisiana. He said the company continues to seek processes for converting woody biomass to biodiesel fuel. "It surely would be great if we could develop some use like that from this brush clearing operation." According to the USDA announcement of the $4.4 million grants, the projects will search for "innovative uses for woody biomass in national forests as sources of renewable energy and new products." The byproducts that are removed can be used for generating energy such as steam and electric, and a variety of other uses. In its brush clearing operations, Taylor Logging converts as much material as possible to chips which are sold for paper, and as boiler fuel at the area mills. The 20 projects approved for grants by USDA are: |