Life-Cycle impacts of Inland Northwest and Northeast/North central forest resources

Determining the life-cycle inventory (LCI) and impact of forest harvest, regeneration, and growth is necessary in conducting a life-cycle assessment of wood products. This publication provides quantitative assessments of the economic and environmental impacts of forest management activities covering portions of the Inland Northwest (INW), including Montana, Idaho, and eastern Washington, and of the Northeastern and North Central (NE/NC) forests from Minnesota to Maine and south as far as Missouri, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. The management scenarios provide the inputs needed to develop an LCI on all the inputs and outputs for wood products as impacted by forest treatments and the harvesting of logs in the region. Productive timberlands were grouped according to forest type, productivity, management intensity, and ownership into three broad forest types in the west: cold, dry, and moist; and four in the east: spruce/fir, northern hardwoods, oak/hickory, and aspen/birch. Spruce/fir represented the feedstock to softwood lumber and a composite of northern hardwoods and oak/hickory the feedstock to hardwood lumber. Simulations used the US Forest Service Forest Vegetation Simulator to estimate standing and harvested biomass and log volumes passed on as resources to the manufacturing segments for lumber, plywood, or oriented strandboard. The combinations of ownership, management intensity, and forest type were stratified and averaged to produce a single estimate of yield and the corresponding harvesting impacts. Both historic harvest rates and increased management intensity scenarios were simulated for each region. In the INW, the shift to the higher intensity scenario increased the average production of merchantable volume at harvest to 249 - 399 m3/ha when averaged across the forested land in each ownership class. For the NE/NC region, the production of merchantable volume averaged 263 m3/ha for softwood and 328 m3/ha for hardwood forests with an insignificant volume response from shifting land into more intensive management. Average growth varied widely for INW forest categories from a low on federal land for the base case of 0.7 - 6.7 m3/haha·yr for moist state and private land under the intensive management alternative. Current condition estimates of softwood log and bark carbon exported for mill processing in the INW and NE/NC regions were 751 and 988 kg/ha·yr, respectively

Integrating Products, Emission Offsets, and Wildfire into Carbon Assessments of Inland Northwest Forests

Forest inventory and harvest data from life-cycle inventory and life-cycle assessment for the forest resources of the Inland Northwest region covering Idaho, Montana, and eastern Washington were used to estimate the impacts of management action on the full suite of carbon accounts that can accrue from forest management. The carbon accounts include the forest, wood products, the benefit gained from using wood products as substitutes for alternative products that are fossil fuel-intensive to produce, and the displacement value of using woody biomass to replace fossil fuel. A landscape-level assessment of projected carbon storage by owner group shows that in 100 yr, management on State and Private Forests can sequester or avoid emissions equal to 294 t/ha of carbon, which equals over 1.9 Gt of carbon across 6.5 Mha. Seventy-nine percent of the carbon accumulates beyond current forest carbon inventories. On National Forests, carbon sequestration and avoided emissions are 152 t/ha over 11 Mha of unreserved forests equaling 1.4 Gt of carbon under predictions for a doubling of the 20th century fire rate. The carbon storage in buildings and the substitution benefits override the potential gains of attempting to leave high carbon stocks stored in the forest in this region where disturbance from fire and insect outbreaks dominates the forest ability to sequester carbon

Cradle to Gate Life Cycle Assessment of Glue-Laminated Timbers Production from the Pacific Northwest Maureen Puettmann, Woodlife Environmental Consultants, LLC

CORRIM, the Consortium for Research on Renewable Industrial Materials, has derived life cycle inventory (LCI) for major wood products and wood production regions in the United States. The life cycle inventory data start with forest regeneration and end with final product at the mill gate. Research has covered nine major forest products including both structural and nonstructural uses and four major regions: in this report we focus on glue-laminated timbers produced in the US Pacific Northwest (PNW) region. The PNW regional data is a representative cross-section of forest growth and manufacturing processes in western Washington and Oregon. This document updates the current glulam LCI from a gate to gate to a cradle to gate LCI Updates include the addition of PNW forestry operations, boiler, resin, and electrical grid data that have been developed since the original mill surveys were conducted in the 1999 and 2000 time period. The updated LCI data were used to conduct life cycle impact assessments (LCIA) using the North American impact method, TRACI 2 v4 (Tool for the Reduction and Assessment of Chemical and Other Environmental Impacts) (Bare et al. 2011). These updates are necessary for the development of environmental product declarations (EPD) which will be based on this document. Thi

2012b. Cradle to Gate Life Cycle Assessment of Oriented Strandboard from the Southeast. CORRIM Report Update

CORRIM, the Consortium for Research on Renewable Industrial Materials, has derived life cycle inventory (LCI) data for major wood products and wood production regions in the United States. The life cycle inventory data covers each stage of processing from forest regeneration to the finished product, packaged and ready for shipment. Research has covered nine major forest products including both structural and nonstructural uses and four major supply regions. In this report we focus on oriented strandboard (OSB) produced in the US Southeast (SE) region, which includes Alabama, Arkansas

Cradle to Gate Life Cycle Assessment of U.S. Particleboard Production Maureen Puettmann, WoodLife Environmental Consultants, LLC

CORRIM, the Consortium for Research on Renewable Industrial Materials, has derived life cycle inventory (LCI) data for major wood products and wood production regions in the United States (U.S.) The life cycle inventory data cover from forest regeneration through to final product at the mill gate. Research has covered nine major forest products including both structural and nonstructural uses and four major regions: in this report we focus on the average U.S. production of particleboard. Wood residue inputs for the U.S. average particleboard production are sourced from the Pacific Northwest (PNW) and Southeast (SE) regions and various wood manufacturing processes. This document updates the current particle board LCI from a gate to gate to a cradle to gate LCI. Updates include the addition of forestry operations, and boiler, and electrical grid data that have been updated since the original mill surveys were conducted in 2004. The updated LCI data were used to conduct a life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) using the North American impact method, TRACI 2.0 (Simapro version 4.0) (Tool for the Reduction and Assessment of Chemical and Other Environmental Impacts) (Bare et al. 2011). These updates are necessary for the development of environmental product declarations (EPD) which will be based on this document. This document originates from the CORRIM LCI reports by Wilson (2008) and Johnson et al. (2005). Updates to the original Wilson report include: wood combustion boiler updates, electricity grid updates (Goemans 2010), and a LCIA. Updates to the forestry operations report (Johnson et al. 2005) include electricity grid updates and a LCIA using the TRACI method. This report follows data and reporting requirements as outlined in the Product Category Rules (PCR) for North American Structural and Architectural Wood Products (PCR 2011) that will provide the guidance for preparation of North American wood product EPD’s. This report does not include comparative assertions.

Cradle to Gate Life Cycle Assessment of Softwood Lumber Production from the Inland Northwest Maureen Puettmann, WoodLife Environmental Consultants, LLC

inventory (LCI) data for major wood products and wood production regions in the United States. The life cycle inventory data cover from forest regeneration through to final product at the mill gate. Research has covered nine major forest products including both structural and nonstructural uses and four major regions: in this report we focus on planed dry softwood lumber produced in the US Inland Northwest (INW) region. The INW regional data is a representative cross-section of forest growth and manufacturing processes in eastern Washington, Idaho, and Montana. This document updates the current wood product LCI’s from a gate to gate to a cradle to gate LCI. Updates include the addition of INW forestry operations, and boiler and electrical grid data that have been developed since the original mill surveys were conducted. The updated LCI data were used to conduct life cycle impact assessments (LCIA) using the North American impact method, TRACI 2.0) (Simapro version 4.0)(Tool for the Reduction and Assessment of Chemical and Other Environmental Impacts) (Bare et al 2011). These updates are necessary for the development of environmental product declarations (EPD) which will be based on this document. This document originates from the CORRIM LCI reports by Wagner et al. (2009), Puettmann et al. (2010) and Oneil et al. (2010). Updates in this report from the original Wagner et al. (2009) and Puettmann et al. (2010) reports include: wood combustion boiler updates, electricity grid updates (Goemans 2010), and a LCIA. Updates to the forestry operations report include electricity grid updates and an LCIA using the TRACI method. This report follows data and reporting requirements as outlined in the Product Category Rules (PCR) for North American Structural and Architectural Wood Products (PCR 2011) that will provide the guidance for preparation of North American wood product EPD. This report does not include comparative assertions.