Our Association is fortunate to have a membership and staff whose efforts go beyond their professional requirements.
Retailers’ growing demand for chain-of-custody certified products has succeeded in driving a stake in the U.S. wood supply chain. In so doing, it has collided with a fundamental reality: the U.S. is unique in the global forestry sector with over 10 million small private landowners—“Family Forest Owners”—controlling close to 58% of the timberland acreage and representing 61% of the harvest.
This Update comes at the launch of a very busy year, with WSRI’s April Annual Meeting just around the corner. At this writing, two research projects are in their final stages, and we’ve begun the process for selecting two new projects from among twelve outstanding project proposals.
TECHNICAL RELEASE 12-R-1
Maintenance of chipper knives, flaker knives, slasher saws, and other sharp-edged parts exposes the individual to injury from cuts, abrasions, and punctures. Maintenance personnel at Weyerhaeuser’s Elkin, North Carolina OSB mill wear a protective arm guard, in addition to cut-resistant gloves, when sharpening or changing the flaker knives.
TECHNICAL RELEASE 12-R-2
Some forest product mills have provided a drop yard for log and chip trailers. The wood fiber haulers who use it are able to deliver more loads in a day, because they do not have to unload during peak (daytime) delivery times or when unforeseen delays arise at a woodyard.
TECHNICAL RELEASE 12-R-3
Prior to 2004, the only way that log truck drivers unloading at the Verso Paper Corporation’s Quinnesec, Michigan mill were able to take the chains off their loads was by walking across the top of the load of 8-foot roundwood.
TECHNICAL RELEASE 12-R-4
Since major rivers and their watersheds in the Northeast have been declared critical spawning habitat for the endangered Atlantic Salmon, fisheries biologists have expressed concern about obstacles to fish passage created by water crossings on logging roads
TECHNICAL RELEASE 12-R-5
The U.S. Census reported that annual housing starts declined 72% between 2005 and 2010, from 2.07 million to 0.59 million. The associated decline in lumber manufacturing and demand for wood raw material have affected forest harvesting and associated reforestation trends in the United States over the past ten years.
TECHNICAL 12-R-6
Surveys/Studies: biomass February 2012
This research is excerpted from the Wood Supply Research Institute (WSRI) project, “Integrating Large-Scale Biomass into the US Wood Supply System,” a collaborative effort by Forisk Consulting and the Center for Forest Business at the University of Georgia. This analysis estimates potential impacts from emerging wood-using bioenergy markets on traditional forest raw material supplies.
TECHNICAL 12-R-7
Trucks/Trucking: safety
Following reports in the late 1980s on the poor safety record of logging trucks in Georgia, researchers at the University of Georgia began compiling statistics on the number and causes of accidents involving log-hauling vehicles. We have reported results from our periodic updates to these data previously (see 92-R-68, 96-R-51, and 06-R-3), and here we provide a review of data from 2004-2008.
