Wood innovations: Economic development
Throughout the Forest Service's history, agency researchers have helped decrease waste and increase profit in the forestry sector—work that continues today as researchers continue to help streamline nearly every aspect of the industry, from harvesting to hauling to processing to selling.
Emerging markets
Agency researchers are developing new supply chain models to efficiently move wood products from forests to processing plants to homes and businesses.
Agency scientists are looking for places where building, expanding, or reactivating wood processing facilities could support forest operations and create rural jobs.
Agency scientists are helping land managers address market and policy challenges in dynamic timber markets.
By hosting roundtables with innovators in the timber and bioproducts industries, agency scientists identified constraints—such as national policies and long term market certainty—challenging private-public partnerships in wildfire mitigation and wood products.
Agency research shows that mass timber buildings can lock in carbon for decades—and could someday contribute to carbon markets.
As part of the public-private P3Nano partnership, Forest Service researchers are innovating ways to use nanocellulose derived from wood. This partnership is boosting uses for small diameter trees and sawmill residuals, which can create profit from these low-value byproducts and buoy rural economies and jobs. And the outlook for nanocellulose is promising—it can replace plastic and other unsustainable materials in packaging and other uses.
Sustainability
With the American Wood Council, agency scientists are analyzing the environmental impacts of wood products from harvest to disposal and creating a publicly available database of their findings.
Scientists are studying biomass and bioproduct markets for wood waste in the Southwestern U.S., a potential boon for a region currently limited in merchantable timber.
Agency researchers are investigating what people think about products made of lumber reclaimed from abandoned buildings and other urban uses. And the agency has made good use of this research; we've partnered with American furniture manufacturers to design lines made of reclaimed wood.
Agency scientists are pioneering nondestructive evaluation methods, which use technology like lasers, x-rays, and sound waves, to “look” inside wood samples. These methods help forest managers assess wood quality across forest operations and help museum curators ensure wooden items on display—think historic ships or sarcophagi—are still withstanding the tests of time.
