Loggers, conservationists, policy-makers and researchers met in Concord to discuss some of the changes global warming may have on forests.
As New Hampshire Public Radio’s Amy Quinton reports, those changes will present both economic challenges and opportunities for the timber industry.
More than 200 people heard a bleak forecast of what New Hampshire’s forests might look like in the future.
If current trends continue 50 years from now, the state’s temperatures will be more like North Carolina’s.
So will the state’s trees.
Gone will be the beautiful sugar maple trees and current hardwood mix, replaced instead with oak and hickory trees.
Eric Kingsley, a conference panelist and former director of the New Hampshire Timberland Owners Association, says that would have a huge economic impact on the state.
“300- thousand in the first decade, a million in 20 years, ten million a year in 50 years, after a century, the cumulative affect is 3.3 billion.â€
While losing the maple sugar industry would amount to a one-point-four million dollar loss over a ten year period -- Kingsley says it’s impossible to put a dollar figure on the cultural loss to New Hampshire.
Many forest managers are already seeing other climate change impacts on forests.
Jeremy Turner, a forest manager with Meadows End Timberlands, in New London, says he’s concerned about shorter winters with longer mud seasons.
“From the weather aspect, the mud season has been noticeably erratic and imposing great challenges with the workforce and working in the woods.â€
Loggers count on having hard frozen ground to haul trees out of the forest.
But the ways in which the country reacts to global climate change could provide unique opportunities to the forest industry.
Biomass electricity is a great example, says Eric Kingsley.
“When we look at biomass from sustainable sourcing, we see a real opportunity in NH. New Hampshire has six wood-fired power plants, each one of these, we have 118 MG watt of generation every Megawatt gives you about a million dollars in annual economic impact.â€
New technologies are also opening up the door for new products from the forest.
Steven Shaler with the Wood Composites Center at the University of Maine says wood can be an excellent source of new synthetic materials.
“Cellolosic ethanol, pyrolosis, syngas, hydrocarbons you would break that down to go back up and create any kind of plastic you want, just nuke that wood all the way down to carbon and hydrogen and build it back up.â€
But Shaler says they’re a long way from making many of these technologies economically feasible.
Loggers are hoping these types of solutions emerge faster than the changes in the trees driven by global warming.
For NHPR news I’m Amy Quinton.
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