Biorenewable Resouces Blog

  Hello everyone! I am back and going to talk about a specific resource today - wood. Wood is undoubtedly a very common product that is prevalent in our day to day lives, for houses and furniture, and for energy like in fireplaces. Wood is such a common commodity due to trees being such a convenient source of resources as well as the fact that a tree can be thoroughly used, with no parts going to waste. Although the abundance and convenience of the resource are great benefits to it as a bioproduct, there are some negatives to the resource that essentially render the resource to be considered as a relatively neutral resource.   As mentioned before, one of the advantages to wood as a resource is that it is fairly convenient to harvest and use up. Harvesting methods are typically categorized into three distinct forms, selection harvest is where the trees are specifically selected based on size and distinction as either groups or single trees, clear-cutting - where all the tr...

  Hey everyone! In the last post, I talked a lot about the general consumption of renewable resources and the impacts that has had. Now, I want to focus on the fact that these resources are coming from somewhere - they have to be developed in some way and what that process entails.  For the most part, the most widely known and used biorenewable resource is some form of wood. That entails that the resource is actually taken from some type of woody biomass - for which there are three mains systems: natural forests, plantation forests, and short rotation coppicing (Lesson 8). There are marked differences between natural forests and plantation forests - primarily because of the intention behind them. Natural forests are, as the name would suggest, naturally occurring - it makes up about 90% of the forests in the United States and closely follows the ecological processes and is related to the biodiversity of the area it is in. Meanwhile, plantation forests are planted specifically ...