Category: Conservation & Environment

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First longleaf academy in Virginia

This is the first longleaf academy in Virginia, so even thought I attended one before (in Georgia), I really wanted to be here for this one that started yesterday and will finish tomorrow. Around a million acres in Virginia were covered by longleaf when the first settlers arrived at Jamestown. It was our founding forest and among the first exports from Jamestown was pitch from Virginia’s pines. Longleaf was too valuable and settlers thought it was limitless. They were mistaken. By around 2000, there were only 200 native Virginian longleaf. That is 200 trees, not 200 acres.
Timber cutting, pigs and no fire
I will say more about the history in my next posts. For now, suffice to mention three factors: the timber value drove the settlers to harvest, over harvest, the forests. They might have grown back except that the settlers also brought with them pigs and allowed them free range. Pigs especially favored longleaf roots and rooted up whole forests of seedlings. Even that might not have finished longleaf, but they also stopped burning. Longleaf ecology is fire dependents. All these factors together doomed longleaf in Virginia, but we nothing is really destroyed until it is replaced. Longleaf could have become a forest champion, except that loblolly proved more economical.
Loblolly is a great tree
Loblolly is a wonderful tree. I have a lot of them on my land and I am happy with them. It grows faster than longleaf in its first twenty years and twenty years is sometime all you need, since they can be made into pulp before that. A longleaf pine can live more than four hundred years, while a loblolly is lucky to live past a century. But nobody needs more than fifty years if they are harvesting timber. Loblolly is the kind of tree that you can plant and mostly forget until you harvest. Longleaf is harder to grow and it requires fire. I know the travails of growing longleaf from personal experience. Why bother?
Value of forest diversity
I have written elsewhere about the great ecological value and diversity of the longleaf ecosystem. The longleaf ecology is the most diverse in non-tropical America. I want to restore in Virginia what was and can be again. Let me vastly simplify here. Trees are more than wood and forest are more than trees and all of us at this conference understand the value of forest, not just trees and trees, not just wood, or at we least want to understand better.
All ecosystems are wonderful; some are wonderful(er)
All ecosystems are wonderful in their own ways, but there are some that are iconic in their regions and some I especially love. I love the white pine ecology and the beech-maple-basswood forest of home. I feel a special bond with the ponderosa pine-montane forests in the Rockies. And my most recent love, the one I can really work with, is the longleaf pine. This is important. I can admire many, but this is one where my efforts can make a (small) difference. That is why I am here.
More notes tomorrow.

My first picture is from the opening of the conference. It is held at Southeast 4-H Educational Center in Wakefield. Next two pictures are from there. Last two pictures are the ferry over the James River. When I got a hotel for the conference, I chose one that was about 30 miles away. There is not much closer, BTW, since this is fairly rural. I did not count on the commute. You have to take a ferry across the James River. It is okay and it is free, but it adds about a half hour or more when you include transit and waiting time.

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Cutting, marking and scouting

I know my land like I know that back of my hand, and if you ask me to describe the back of my hand w/o looking at it, I cannot tell you in any detail. Today I did a some cutting, some scouting and some marking.

Our December prescribed fire is less than a month away. I am preparing by making lanes, so that we don’t get stuck in the brambles and the fires can be more easily directed. I admit that I maybe am getting a little carried away, since I like to use my cutter. I am also cutting around and marking bald cypress, since I do not want the fires to kill them.

It is much easier to find them now, since they have are in their rust red fall colors. I am pleased to find more than I thought there were. There are some very little ones that I planted last spring and the bigger ones that Eric Goodman planted in 2012. The older ones are almost sure to survive if I give them a little help. I will need to be very careful with the new ones.

Speaking of not knowing the back of my hand, i.e. my land, I had to scout along the edges of the SMZ. Our plan is to let the fire drop into the SMZ, where it will die out, maybe doing a little good by clearing some brush. However, I wanted to be sure that actual streams would be there as the last line of defense, should things not go as we want. I was glad to confirm that the streams form a continuous barrier.

Both belt and suspenders
In an abundance of caution, I want to make a black line along the stream before we do the rest of the fire. I tested the duff. It does not easily burn, which is good in this case. I want to fire to die out when it hits that layer. Of course, I don’t know what the precise conditions will be o/a December 9, but my assumption is that it will not be that different.

I think the land is ready and there is not much more that I can do to prepare. Hope to make is easier for Adam Smith and DoF. In fact, it might be better for me to leave it alone now. It like playing a video game. As soon as I get one thing done, another seems to show up. But I am at the point of very diminishing returns. I can clip now, but I will be clipping what the fire will get anyway.

It will be great to see what wildflowers come up after the fires. After the 2017 fire, it was really fun to see the succession of wild fire regimes. It should be even more interesting now that we have added more variety of seeds. And I have new seeds to spread – some I gathered and others I bought, so we will have the full panoply of forbs and flowers.
My picture is are trees against the sky this morning. There was a woodpecker in the tree, but the picture could not catch it. I think the picture looks artistic anyway.

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Using forests to reduce CO2 works IF we harvest wood to build with wood

There is important nuance here. Mature forests store carbon, but they do not, on balance, capture much from the air. This is because decay balances growth in a mature forest. Forests may be the “lungs of the world” but mature forests produce about as much CO2 as they take it. It has to be this way, else forests would have long since absorbed all the CO2 in the atmosphere and ended life on earth as we know it.
Life giving CO2
We NEED CO2 for life to go on as much as we need oxygen. We just need rather less of it at this time.
How can planting trees take carbon out of the air? The short answer is that – on balance – they can’t. What? A lot depends on the conditions and what happens after.
Coal is fossil wood
Consider how coal was formed. Millions of generations of forests used the power of sunlight to convert billions of tons of CO2 into wood. Wood is about 1/2 carbon by dry weight. The key to forming fossil fuels is that the wood did not decay. Over time, geological forces pressed it into coal. Fossil fuel – coal is wood that did not decay in distant past epochs. When we burned that coal, we released the energy of billions of sunny days and also that carbon that had come with it.
It is a problem, but the thought of coal is awesome and poetic in its own way. What are our current prosaic options?
Forest life cycle matters
A mature forest stores, but does not capture carbon – on balance. I am going to stop saying “on balance,” so please just assume it going forward. A young forest captures carbon but does not store much of it. Most American forests these days are middle aged. They are transitioning from young to old because of the peculiar way they grew. There was a big forest regeneration in the early & middle of the 20th Century. These trees are now reaching maturity. I could go into that interesting story, but I need now to stick to this one. The thing to remember is that America forests have been capturing carbon for the last century but they are at the point where they will stop doing that.
Don’t let nature decide
If we “let nature decide,” nature will choose to release more carbon from our forests, given the age structures. (BTW – there really is not let nature decide option. Our choices are good human choices of bad ones.) But we have a wonderful option open to us, one that will allow carbon to be stored for another century, will keep our forests young growing and healthy and keep them capturing carbon. All the while this is going on, it will make our built environment more ecologically friends and more human friendly.
If we responsibly and regeneratively harvest our forests in ways that respect the forest ecosystem, we can continue to store carbon in roots and soils. This has the added advantage of improving soil texture, making it better able to absorb and hold water helping protect our drinking water and avoiding floods. It also helps us to prevent disastrous wildfires, landslides and just makes everything better.
The next step is to use the harvested timber to replace less environmentally benign options in building, materials like concrete and steel. Let’s be clear. Wood cannot replace these materials in all way, but in a lot of cases it can.
This is a virtuous cycle. There are wonderful benefits and literally no important costs (I will say again here on balance.).
Some references
Environmental costs of  concrete
Wood replaces concrete and steel

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Finding the little longleaf

Thank you Mariza, Brendan, Alex, Colin, Espen, Andrea & Chrissy for planting longleaf for me last winter. I went looking for them with my cutter today on the farm, i.e. I cut around some of them so that I could see them better.

It was nearly impossible to see them, since they are in the grass stage and they look like … well … grass. But now that the grass is brown you can see the green longleaf.
We got these trees from Aaron Bodenhamer/ Louie Bodenhamer and will get the next ones there too. All the Longleaf on the Freeman place are from Bodenhamer farms.

Burn then plant
We are planning to burn the week of December 9 (depending on weather). The kids will come down soon after to plant the next few thousand longleaf, but I wanted to show them the green trees. The fire will make them look dead. They will NOT be dead, but it might be depressing to see them that way. We will inter-plant a little, but mostly plant the quarter acres clearings among the loblolly.
Protect the bald cypress
I am a little worried about the bald cypress I planted last spring. They are in the wetter areas, so the fires should not be too hot. As a precaution, however, I cleared around some of them and made a fire line for the rest. Labor intensive, but it makes me feel more secure. On the fire day, I will go around and start the fires at the edges so that it burns out. I think they will survive.
Rattlesnake master
I also gathered some of the wildflower seeds, especially from the rattlesnake master. I will spread them after the fires. Rattlesnake master is not showy, but the bees and butterflies love them. Seeds are not so easy to find, so I am glad I have a bunch. I admit that I like it because of the cool name.
It was a “can’t see to can’t see” day, i.e. I left home in the dark and came back in the dark. I pushed it a little, since I figured that I could find my way back along my cut paths even if it got dark, since there was a nearly full moon.
I took a picture of the moon. It did not come out well, but I included it anyway. The first two pictures are the little longleaf looking good. They spend their first year or two sending down roots. This is the grass stage. Then the grow up fast. They call it the rocket stage. Picture # 3 is one of the bald cypress. I put the orange string on some of them, since they will have dropped their needles by the time of the fire and impossible hard to identify otherwise.

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Save forests, cut trees

I know that I harp on this, but I think it so important. MOST people got it wrong when they think about forests, harvests & markets. Far from harming forest health, strong markets mean healthy forests and lack of harvests leads to widespread decline, disastrous fires & forest killing insect attack.
Saving paper doesn’t save trees
“Don’t print. Save a tree.” If you have that on your email, you are mistaken. There are good reasons not to waste paper, but these are related to energy costs and use of chemicals in paper manufacture. You do NOT save trees by saving paper. You do NOT save forests by using less wood. Of course, there are nuances.
Harvests and deforestation are not the same things. Deforestation for wood production simply is no longer an important issue in Europe or North America. To the extent that deforestation is an issue at all it results from forest being converted to other uses.
Real threats to forests are not harvests
These days deforestation results from suburban expansion, road building, energy exploration and even for construction of solar farms. And forest ecosystem are destroyed by big fires and insect infestations.
Ironically, the “environmentally aware” guys who build beautiful homes in the woods, using bamboo, recycled wood or even hemp, drive electric cars powered by a nearby solar farm and use that car to drive to protests against forest harvests are much more destructive to forests than the guys operating the chainsaws.
Save forests, use more wood
If you want to improve the health of American forests, you should use MORE wood, stipulating that it come from forests managed according to ecological principles are in harmony with a strong land ethic. This includes most forests in North America. Things are not what they were in the exploitative old days, but people’s perceptions have not caught up.
Preserve some, use some steward all
Think of our American land in three categories. Some places are so unique that we should try to preserve them. I say “try” because nature is dynamic and cannot be preserved, but some places can be stewarded to keep the local environment much as it was in a time we found it or like to remember it. Some places will be used intensively. There will not be much free living nature in the center of a big city, in a mine or under a road. The disruption may be short-lived or long term, but we have to accept these as the cost of our living on earth. Both the preserved and the intensely used make up a prominent but relatively small part of the total land area.
Most land should be stewarded not only sustainably but regeneratively. We have learned to do this in forestry, especially over the last decades and we know how to do it in agriculture, although big challenges remain in implementing what we know and learning more.
Let me emphasize that this is a human hands-on exercise, but one informed by science, experience and land ethic.
I am certainly not content with the current state of forestry. We can always improve and we are always improving, but the way to improve is by being involved, not by standing aside.
And please take that inane saying about saving trees by saving paper off your emails.

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Short trip to the forest 2nd day

Early on a frosty morning. It was prettier than my pictures capture. I spent the day cutting around the little longleaf, as you see in the picture.

I cut a path along the SMZ after that. We are planning to burn the middle acres this winter and I want to back the fire down to the little stream, but I also want to make sure that we can get around easily so nothing goes wrong, hence the path. It was mostly clear, since the big trees shade out most of the undergrowth, but I cut through a few fallen trees and lots of green briar. Green briar is like natural barbed wire. It hangs from the trees and can stop anybody trying to walk along the stream side. This is bad enough when you are just walking; it might be a bigger problem when you are carrying a burning jug of diesel/gas mix.

First three pictures are from the morning. The frost made pretty pictures. I planted the little longleaf in picture #1 last year. The loblolly were planted in 2016 and are doing well. Picture #4 is the SMZ. We can burn down to the stream. We did this last year on the other side and it worked well. Last picture is the end of the day. It gets dark earlier now.

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Short trip to the forests

Down on the farms today for a beautiful cool fall day. I was greeted by a fallen log blocking the road. It would have taken me a hour with my hand saw, but I happy to see Larry & Dale Walker pull up with a chain saw. It was clear in a few minutes.

I was cutting around some of my little longleaf. I think it is helpful. I am not sure it is the best use of time, but I like to do it,so it is not like work. Ever since I got my good ear protectors and can listen (and hear) my audio books, I enjoy it a lot more.

I finished one audio book, a short one called “Big Business” by Tyler Cowen. He is a very original thinker. He wrote the book to debunk some of the myths of big business and to offer an explanation as to why so many smart people dislike business. There are a few reasons, principle of which is that they don’t make proper comparisons. The problems of business are the problems of humanity, but we blame business.

He also cleared up something I had heard but not completely. Mitt Romney got in trouble for saying corporations are people. He did say that, but the context was unfair. He went on to say that corporations pay money to people. They are pass through to people.
I started another book called “Dominion,” a history of Christianity.

It is just nice combining so many things I like. I like the audio books. I like to cut around my pines. I like to be in the woods and I like to have the chance to let my mind wander in these situations. I even get some exercise. The sweet life.

My first picture is from Pilot at Exit 104. I used to always take the gas pictures, but it got kinda redundant. But this time there was a big drop in gas prices. Don’t know why.
Other pictures are the Brodnax place. Nice day, but days are getting shorter.

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The whole forest life cycle

My contribution to Virginia Forests Magazine
The whole forest life cycle

Most of our mid-rise and almost all our tall buildings are made mostly from concrete and steel. Production and transport of concrete and steel buildings is extremely energy intensive and emits massive amounts of CO2.  We just cannot build in the same old wasteful way. Fortunately, there is a simple solution – wood the original green building material, now updated for the 21st Century.
Mass timber: new technology for wood
The key is the development mass timber, a category that includes heavy timber beams and various sorts of laminated timber.  Of these, the most revolutionary is Cross laminated timber (CLT). As the name implies, boards set across each other creating a mass timber product combining strength in both tension and compression, with the power and spanning capacity of steel and fire resistance of concrete. This last factor is surprising. Everybody knows that wood burns and we have all seen pictures of buildings engulfed in flames, but mass timber chars. If you have tried to start a campfire using only big logs, you know the situation.  The outside turns black, but the fire does not penetrate.
CLT means that wood can replace concrete or steel in the mid and high-rise buildings they now predominate.  It is a revolutionary development.
Well managed forests are the key

But I am not an engineer or an architect. I can tell you only what experts tell me about these innovations building with wood, and I believe them. Forests I know from personal experience and lifelong passion and it is my land ethic and understanding of a total forest life cycle that drives my commitment to building with wood.
The way I see it wood in the built environment is an extension of the life of our forests.  Our trees suck up (sequester) carbon every year they are growing.  When they are harvested, wood processed into CLT used in tall buildings can hold onto that carbon for years, decades even centuries.  Carbon makes up about 50% of wood’s dry weight.  Meanwhile, we are growing the next generations of trees, also absorbing carbon while creating wildlife habitat, protecting water resources and just being things of beauty.
The whole virtuous circle depends on our good forest stewardship.  The wood in our high-rise “urban forests” must come from properly managed and probably certified forests.  It would not do to deforest our land to build the urban forests. We must look forward to future generations. Fortunately, Virginia tree farmers are up to the challenge.  It is what we do and have done since the American Tree Farm System was created, a proud legacy made newly important by timber innovation.
This is the contribution we can make, are making and will make in future.
Good background https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190717-climate-change-wooden-architecture-concrete-global-warming
 
 

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Biggest private longleaf forests in Virginia

Everything I can do, Bill Owens can do better, at least when we are talking about longleaf pine in Virginia. This is all to the good, since we all benefit from the good works of others. Bill has a lot more acreage in general, a lot more acreage in longleaf (his land comprises around 20% of ALL Virginia longleaf on private land) and yesterday I attended a program commemorating his committing more than 1500 acres to stewardship for the Nature Conservancy.
Fire in the forest can be good
We started with a field demonstration of fire in longleaf forests. People who know me are bored when I say it, but I need to repeat anyway. Longleaf is a fire dependent species. The first English colonists found vast and generally wide-open forests of longleaf.  Judging from the remnants we see today, they were forests of remarkable beauty and diversity.  They harvested the big trees. This was our founding forest, the forests that first built what became the United States of America.  Trees are a renewable resource, but the colonists did a couple things that prevented regeneration of longleaf forests – they introduced free-range pigs that rooting up longleaf seedlings (the pigs especially liked the longleaf because of their bigger roots) and they excluded fire. They just didn’t understand.
Fire was a regular feature in pre-settlement Virginia pinelands. Some were set off by lighting, more often it was Native Americans who set fires.  Virginia was not a wilderness. It was a landscape managed by humans, with fire as their most potent tool. Fire passed through Virginia pine forests every 3-5 years, more frequently in some other areas of the south. These were low intensity fires, surface fires that pruned the lower branches but did not reach into the crowns, as you see in my first picture. They burned brush and litter, but rarely killed mature trees. This was an ecologically beneficial fire (not like those we read about in California that result from poor land management, but that is a different story.)
Bringing fire back
Virginia Department of Forestry, US Fish and Wildlife, TNC, Longleaf Alliance, NRCS and lots of private landowners, me among them, are trying to reintroduce ecologically beneficial fire to the commonwealth. It a deeply cooperative endeavor.
The ecological benefits of fire are obvious to scientists who study fire and practitioners who use it to improve forest health and wildlife habitat, but setting the woods on fire is not an easy sell to a general public that grew up with Smokey Bear’s messages and images of fire destroying forests and homes. As I am writing this, I am listening to reports of dangerous fires in California. Fire is the enemy, according to most people. If nothing else, they dislike the smoke and disturbance. To this there are two responses.
— Re the problems of fire – fire is an unavoidable and natural part of nature. If we do not choose a good time to set off the fire, nature will give it to us in the worst times. And if we exclude small fires, we will get big ones. This is history and the present, as we hear about every year.
–Re disturbing nature – nature is always disturbed.  It is how nature works, always becoming never arriving. We call that natural change.  Embrace impermanence. It must be welcomed. We can benefit if we understand and flow with natural processes. We can multiply our choices working with nature or we can be dragged painfully along in ignorance & against our will. In either case, we are going.
You can tell which I advocate.  Living within natural processes brings freedom and contentment.  Fighting them brings frustration and ruin.  A life spent trying to understand, or maybe perceive natural processes in meaningful. But I am drifting from my story.
Returning to the Owen story
Bill Owen’s generosity was commemorated with a reception at the Petersburg Country Club. Among the speakers were Reese Thompson from Longleaf Alliance. He is the one who “invented” Burner Bob, a giant bobwhite quail that promotes prescribed fire in the forests the way Smokey Bear told us to avoid wildfire. Bettina Ring, Virginia Secretary of Agriculture and Forestry and previous Virginia State Forester. She pointed out that agriculture is Virginia’s leading industry and forestry is number three, after tourism. Brian Van Eerden from TNC opened and closed the ceremony.

My first picture shows the fire in the forest. Next is what it looks like unburned for only a little more than a year. The stuff accumulates. Picture #3 is me and Burner Bob, followed by NRCS and TNC explaining longleaf ecology and programs available to landowners. Next is the ceremony at Petersburg Country Club. The penultimate picture shows a special longleaf beer and the final picture shows some of my bald cypress on the Freeman place. They are easy to see with their fall colors. I have trimmed around them so that they will not be killed by the fire we plan for this winter.

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Mass Timber road show

The Think Wood mobile tour is a beautiful museum-quality display showing environmental & economic benefits of different softwood lumber and engineered wood products. I attended the launch at the National Building Museum.
New wood technologies
New technologies and innovative techniques are transforming the way we build with wood. The key to much of this improvement is mass timber. This category includes heavy timber beams and various sorts of laminated timber (held together with glue, nail and dowels). The most revolutionary is Cross laminated timber (CLT). As the name implies, boards set across each other creating a mass wood product with strength in tension and compression and giving it the strength and spanning capacity of steel and fire resistance of concrete.
U.S. Rep. Bruce Westerman from Arkansas & architect Susan Jones were among the speakers.
Bruce Westerman
Westerman gave the perfect talk about how and why we need to care for forests. I was mightily impressed that he did it w/o notes. I am not accustomed to such environmental competence in politicians, and I briefly considered moving to Arkansas just so I could vote for this guy. When I looked up his biography, I understood. He has a MA in forestry from Yale.
Besides the discussion about properly caring for forests, Westerman went on that building with wood was something that we can right now do to address climate change. Trees absorb carbon as they grow. When harvested trees go into buildings, the wood may hold that carbon for decades or even centuries. Wood buildings are essentially part of the forests life cycle.
Susan Jones
Susan Jones is probably America’s leading evangelist for cross laminated timber. In fact, it was her talk at the National Building Museum in 2016 the converted me to the cause of mass timber and the forest connection.
She was also instrumental to changing building codes to allow building taller with wood.
Nothing we can do that is more effective to address climate change
I am not an engineer or an architect, so I can tell you only what experts tell me about these wood innovations. Forests I know from personal experience and lifelong passion and it is my land ethic and understanding of a total forest life cycle and my land ethic that drives my commitment to building with wood.
Most of our mid-rise and almost all our tall buildings are made mostly from concrete and steel. Production and transport of concrete and steel buildings is extremely energy intensive and emits massive amounts of CO2. Fortunately, there is a simple solution – wood. Wood is the original green building material.
Besides caring for my own forests and helping others do the same, nothing I can personally do that will do more to address climate change than advocating for more wood used in building medium-rise and tall buildings. Healthy forests and cities built with wood is a virtuous cycle.
Beyond all that, wood is just nice. It makes people feel better to be around wood. Most people like to look at it, touch it and smell it. I know that scientists have figured out the connection. I just know it is true.

My first picture show the exhibit on the rainy day. I took the pictured sheltered in the tent with little salmon sandwiches and free beer. The next picture shows what happens when mass timber is exposed to fire. The outside chars, but it does not easily burn and it maintains its structural integrity. Scientists and fire departments around the world are testing this product and finding wonderful results. Next are pictures of Rep Westerman and Susan Jones. My last picture is one I took a couple years ago at the “Timber City” exhibit showing the types of mass timber.