Innovations Underway

Forest Products Modernization involves spreading innovations and ideas that are working well around the country and sharing what we are learning. We want to foster implementation of innovative approaches to forest products delivery across the country; sharing an innovative practice, technique, or new technology used on one district or forest with other units so they can consider implementing these innovations too. By identifying actions that make restoration harvest work easier and sharing these innovative ways of getting our work done more widely, we expect to increase the pace and scale of forest restoration and improve our ability to apply these actions more consistently and effectively across the agency.

Several of these innovations are highlighted below.

New innovations will be added here as they become available. Please help us share these ideas and if you have suggestions for other innovations we should consider and share, please send them to our FPM inbox

Innovation of the Month: Tornado damaged forest helps power Forest Service Savannah River Site

When natural events such as a fire, tornado, hurricane, or an ice storm damage trees, traditional sale area survey methods often cannot be justified. The value of the timber is often severely reduced and there is a need to get the timber sold as quickly as possible to minimize additional losses due to insects and decay. Employee safety must also be considered. “Having employees walking over, around, and under jack-strawed and broken trees to estimate quantities or to paint boundaries is hazardous work. It puts workers at serious risk of injury,” said Savannah River Sales Forester, Ed Clutter.

In April 2020, two tornadoes touched down on the Savannah River Site, damaging nearly 500 acres of timber. The traditional process of painting cutting area boundaries and sample-measuring the timber to be harvested was not only impractical, but it was also extremely hazardous for sale preparation workers. To respond quickly and safely, Savannah River foresters relied upon innovative methods to prep the sale. They used GPS coordinates to establish cutting unit boundaries instead of painting boundaries, and used a comparative cruise of similar areas to estimate sale quantities, rather than take actual sample measurements across a hazardous landscape. By using these two methods, two people prepared the damaged areas for sale in a matter of weeks. Not only were fewer people needed to prepare the sale, it was done more safely and more quickly than standard methods would have allowed. In addition, the reduced sale preparation costs were in line with the greatly reduced value of the damaged timber.

The sale was sold as a weight-scaled sale, with the timber sold by the ton rather than by volume. While this is not a traditional sale method for standing green timber, it is commonly used for damaged timber. The estimated quantity sets the general amount of timber in the sale, and the actual amount is determined when the buyer weighs the wood at the destination scales. Load removal receipts attached to each truck load of wood are returned to the Forest Service along with a weight ticket issued at the destination scales. The Forest Service then bills the buyer for the wood removed at the bid rate.

Tornado damage is some of the worst damage that wood can sustain. The tree stems are twisted, cracked, broken, and strewn about with no order. For the most part, the only use for this wood is to convert it to chips for biomass energy. The Savannah River Site replaced its coal power and steam generating plant with a much cleaner burning biomass plant about ten years ago. The buyer of this sale plans to chip the wood and haul most of the chips to the biomass plant as fuel. “This sale has turned out to be a win-win for everybody,” Clutter said. “The Forest Service is able to get the damaged timber removed at no cost so restoration activities can be carried out, the biomass plant gets a local source of fuel, and the U.S. Department of Energy can claim carbon credits for using site-produced wood in the production of some of their on-site energy needs.”

For more information contact Ed Clutter, Contracting Officer edward.clutter@usda.gov