LWU: Lesson - Sustainable Forestry (Topic 5.17) 📖

⏳ Estimated Reading Time: 8 - 10 minutes

Describe methods for mitigating human impact on forests.

Sustainable Forestry

Sustainable forestry is harvesting forests to make products for today’s human population without compromising the ability of future populations to meet their forest-related needs.

You might wonder how forests can be sustainable if they are cut down to produce products such as lumber and paper pulp. The answer lies in forest management. In the United States, most public forests are managed by the United States Forest Service (USFS), a division of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

A map of the United States, showing the proportion of land that is forested in each state. The map reveals that the eastern states, especially in the northeast, have the highest proportion of forested land, while the central states have the lowest. The average forest coverage for the entire country is 37%. — **Forests, land that is at least 10% stocked by trees of any size, across the United States.**

The reason the USFS is a part of the USDA is that trees are considered an agricultural crop, grown to be harvested for use by humans just like crops such as wheat, corn, and soybeans. The difference with trees is that they take decades to mature into a harvestable crop and must endure changing seasons, drought, pests, invasive species, fire, landslides, earthquakes, hurricanes, and even climate change in order to reach maturity.

a group of people standing in the Chattahoochee National Forest near a large waterfall — **The** **Chattahoochee** **National Forest in Georgia.**

The USFS plays a central role in making sure that forests remain sustainable into the future. Many people mistakenly believe that the mission of the USFS is to make sure that all forests are preserved and remain off-limits to anyone intent on cutting them down, but the USFS works with logging companies to help them harvest trees on public lands. In fact, the USFS helps build roads so that the logging companies can access timber in remote locations! This happens because we need companies to harvest timber so that we can have access to all of the products made from trees. The USFS helps ensure that forests are harvested with sustainability in mind.

When you go to a home improvement store, you want prices of lumber to be low. When you buy paper products, you want prices of those products to be low as well. We all want low prices for tree-related products, and we can’t have low prices without having companies harvest enough timber to keep those prices low. In this lesson, we will discuss some ways we can practice sustainable forestry, so we can have reasonably priced wood and paper products for many years to come.

Mitigating Deforestation

Mitigation is the process or result of making something less severe, dangerous, painful, harsh, or damaging. Different strategies and methods are used to mitigate deforestation.

Click through the tabs below. Reforestation, using and buying wood harvested by ecologically sustainable forestry techniques, and reusing wood whenever possible are three of the most effective of these mitigation methods. Are there any of these methods you can do as an individual?

Reforestation

A forest scene illuminated by natural sunlight filtering through the dense canopy of leaves. — **Reforestation has been a part of the mission of the USFS since its inception in 1905.**

Reforestation involves replanting trees after harvesting is complete. The Organic Administration Act of 1897 helped establish our national forests and also provided for reforestation of denuded forest areas. Early reforestation efforts were focused on burned areas but eventually included areas that were ravaged by pests, landslides, and timber harvesting.

Clearcutting, one of the most used harvest methods, became popular during the early 1900s and reforestation of clear-cut areas became a major focus. More recently, large fires driven by buildups of heavy amounts of hazardous fuels in the form of forest debris have become the primary focus of reforestation efforts.

The Forest Service reforestation program has four major goals:

To maintain all forest lands within the National Forest System in appropriate forest cover.
To improve the quality and yield of the timber resource.
To accelerate the attainment of desired species composition and stocking objectives in a cost-efficient manner.
To develop and demonstrate successful reforestation methods and techniques and encourage their use by other landowners.

The USFS continues to employ reforestation as an ongoing forest management method and will continue to use it into the future.

Purchasing Sustainable Products

a visual representation of an “Ecological Sustainability Evaluation Tool.” consisting of five colored buttons and two bars below them indicating the sustainability level. The image is meant to help users assess the ecological impact of their actions or choices. — **The Ecological Sustainability Evaluation Tool (ESET) uses ecosystem, watershed, species, and species group data to help the USFS to plan revisions to any existing management plans.**

Purchasing sustainable wood products can help promote sustainable forestry by creating a market demand for wood that comes from well-managed forests. This can encourage forest owners and managers to adopt practices that conserve biodiversity, protect ecosystem services, respect local communities, and comply with legal and ethical standards. By choosing sustainable wood products, consumers can also reduce their environmental impact by using renewable and biodegradable materials that store carbon and have a lower life cycle footprint than other materials.

Reusing Wood

Since wood is a valuable resource, more and more effort and thought are going into how to reuse wood whenever possible. Of course, when lumber prices are low, many people see no need to reuse wood but when lumber prices are very high, wood reuse becomes more of a necessity rather than a passing thought.

Wood reuse takes many forms from reusing lumber from old barns, buildings, and homes to making new products out of used wood. The Green Building movement, which began in the late 1900s-early 2000s, encouraged the use of reclaimed wood in new construction projects.

Builders score points towards “green building certification” when reusing wood from other construction projects. Today, it’s becoming more and more common to see reclaimed wood in new construction projects.

Of course, anyone can reuse wood. The next time you observe wood being used around your home or neighborhood, give some thought as to how any of the wood waste could be reused. You might be surprised about how creative a person can get!

Thanks to the forest management techniques described here, the forests in the United States have remained stable over the past 50 years and the forests have increased over 20% since 1990. This is evidence that the efforts towards sustainability of the USFS and timber companies are paying off.

Essential Knowledge

Some of the methods for mitigating deforestation include reforestation, using and buying wood harvested by ecologically sustainable forestry techniques, and reusing wood.

Pest Control in Forests

Integrated Pest Management is used by the USFS to help mitigate damage done to forests by pest species. Biological control methods, biopesticides, and some chemical pesticides are used to reduce damage from pests such as the Gypsy Moth.

Remember, IPM starts with cultural, biological, and mechanical control, and only using chemical pesticides as a last resort.

Essential Knowledge

Methods to protect forests from pathogens and insects include integrated pest management (IPM) and the removal of affected trees.

Fire Management

A bear holding a shovel and wearing a hat labeled "SMOKEY." It is part of a campaign, emphasized by the text "ONLY YOU" at the bottom of the image. — **Smokey the Bear was created by the US Forest Service in 1944 to encourage citizens to prevent forest fires. His slogan was, "Only you can prevent forest fires."**

Traditionally, fires were considered negative events that destroyed forests. Governments thought that they needed to prevent fires – both natural and human-caused. The prevention of natural fires has disrupted the ecology in many forest ecosystems.

Fire-climax ecosystems are ecosystems that depend on fires to reset the ecological clock. We have learned that fires are important parts of these ecosystems. Grasslands and some forests are both fire-climax ecosystems that are adapted to periodic fires. Benefits of fires in fire-climax ecosystems:

✅ clear out debris on the forest floor

✅ allow seeds to germinate that are only released during times of extreme heat

✅ creates a patchwork of meadows and forests at different stages, leading to a more diverse habitat

Prescribed Burns

Now, instead of preventing forest fires, the USFS does something called a prescribed burn. These are human-managed fires that keep forests healthy by clearing out debris before it gets to be too much and allowing those plants to persist whose seeds require fires to release or open.

In 2002, the Healthy Forests Initiative (HFI) was signed by President Bush. A major goal of the HFI was to reduce the risk of catastrophic fires.

A controlled, prescribed burn in progress amidst a natural setting with rocky terrains and sparse vegetation. Several firefighters are visible, equipped and monitoring the fire. Flames and smoke rise from the ground, indicating an active but managed fire. A diamond-shaped sign with bold letters warns passersby that this is a prescribed burn and not to report it. — **Prescribed burns are human-managed fires that keep forests healthy and prevent uncontrolled wildfires.**

One of the strategies used under the HFI is prescribed burning which reduces the forest debris that accumulates during long periods without burns. Turns out that fire suppression (putting fires out rather than letting them burn) upsets the ecological balance of a forest because it allows for the buildup of large amounts of flammable forest debris on the forest floor. When a fire finally does burn over an area like that, it becomes much bigger than a normal fire resulting in catastrophic damage to the soil, waterways, and even human homes.

The Camp Fire that occurred in California in 2018 killed 85 humans and destroyed over 18,500 human structures. The town of Paradise, California was effectively destroyed by that catastrophic fire. Prescribed burns are intended to lessen the severity of fires such as the Camp Fire.

The following are benefits of using prescribed fire as a forest management tool:

✅ Reduces hazardous fuels, protecting human communities from extreme fires

✅ Minimizes the spread of pest insects and disease

✅ Removes unwanted species that threaten species native to an ecosystem

✅ Provides forage for game animals

✅ Improves habitat for threatened and endangered species

✅ Recycles nutrients back into the soil

✅ Promotes the growth of trees, wildflowers, and other fire-adapted plants

Prescribed fires remain somewhat controversial because even though great care is taken to keep them from getting out of control, occasionally one does unwanted damage. The evidence shows, however, that prescribed fire is an effective tool for helping to keep forests healthy.

Essential Knowledge

Prescribed burn is a method by which forests are set on fire under controlled conditions in order to reduce the occurrence of natural fires.

AP Exam Tip

There are several things we can do as individuals to promote sustainable forestry.

You should know the Healthy Forest Initiative - it has shown up on the AP exam before!

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