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UPM Biofore introduces sustainable forestry

 Tuesday, March 1, 2022

UPM

UPM Biofore advances technology to improve sustainable forestry. Soil plays a key role in forestry. A primary driver of forest productivity according UPM, soil quality and preparation are fundamental to commercial forestry, but not all soil is created equal.

Methol explains that both the soil preparation process for afforestation and reforestation are similar, albeit with one crucial difference in UPM Biofore . “To prepare the soil on new land, we use a specially developed plough to till the soil and create a small mound in the strips for the seedlings. For the reforestation process, which takes place after the harvest every ten years, it’s very important to maintain all the bark, branches and leaves for nutrient recycling, so we have developed a machine, which cuts all the coarse debris and puts it to the side.”

“More than half of a forest’s carbon may be in its soil,” says Christopher Swanston, Acting Director of the Office of Sustainability and Climate at the United States Forest Service. However, “there is a tremendous variety in soils and they tend to store carbon differently. The same things that drive soil formation help control carbon storage – such as climate, landscape position, ecosystem inputs and soil biology, texture and underlying geology, and time. Cold northern forests (boreal) grow slowly, but the cold climate allows carbon to accumulate in the forest floor, forested peat bogs or even frozen soil (permafrost). Warm, wet tropical forests store most of their carbon in vegetation and the soil carbon is more susceptible to decay.”


Using sustainable forestry to improve soil’s carbon intake

Forest managers, therefore, need to consider their local environment and engage in region-specific best practises to promote soil’s net carbon intake. “Soil carbon is the small residual from inputs (forest litter, detritus) and outputs (mainly decomposition, but also erosion), so anything that forest management can do to mitigate the ‘outputs’ part of this equation would likely increase soil carbon,” says Dr Evan Kane, Associate Professor at Michigan Tech’s College of Forest Resources.

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