Clever Wood Use Could Mitigate Wildfires and Climate Change

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By Andrew Chapman, Eos/AGU. 

Excerpt: In a study published early this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, provide a possible path to limiting both carbon emissions and wildfires by turning the low-value wood harvested during forest thinning into new products. ...Two scenarios modeled business-as-usual forest management in California with variations in how much wood is sold. The third introduced a value to the low-value wood generated from forest thinning, allowing it to be used for new products. Smaller trees can be turned into a construction-grade wood product called oriented strand board, which retains the wood as a carbon store. A mixture of forest residues, including leaves and bark, can be used to make low-carbon fuels, such as hydrogen fuel.…

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