Thursday Afternoon -- Louisiana-Pacific Tour
After lunch on Thursday, we visited Louisana-Pacific's small diameter sawmill in Gwinn and made a stop on the Marquette County forest to learn about jack pine silviculture. We finished the day with a bus tour along Lake Superior before heading to dinner at Upfront and Co. in Marquette.
Gwinn Sawmill
Louisiana-Pacific's mill in Gwinn, Michigan is a high tech, small log mill
capable of processing logs up to 20" in diameter. From this mill they
produce 500,000 bd. ft. of 2x4", 2x6" lumber studs in 7-9' lengths daily.
The facility housing the mill used to be a strategic air command base for the air force until 1995. Our mill orientation from HR/Safety Manager, Phil Preach was conducted in what used to be a refuel bay for cruise missiles. In 1996 the Sawyer Lumber Company was established on the site and operations began within a year. In 2000, Louisiana-Pacific purchased the mill and it ranks highly as far as production capacity in the U.S.
Teachers broke up into four groups for the tour. Our guides, Jim, Rob, Todd, and Mark took us through the lumber and planar mill to see how softwood logs (jack pine, red pine, spruce, and fir) were broken down into construction-grade lumber which was then dried, planed, and packaged for shipping. Click here for an overview of the lumber-making process.
In addition to showing teachers the lumber making process, the tour illustrates how efficiently logs are utilized in modern mills, minimizing waste. Even process residue is utilized: Wood chips from this mill go to the Mead paper mill (which we visited Thursday morning) as well as Domtar in Nekoosa, WI and International Paper in Kaukauna, WI. Sawdust from the mill is utilized at the GP Flakeboard plant in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. Planar shavings are packaged and sold for pet bedding and bark is used on-site as boiler fuel.
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Marquette County Forest
The 14,000 acre Marquette County Forest consists largely of dry, sandy soils
of a glacial outwash plain. Jack pine is about the only tree species that can
thrive on these soil types but its specific ecology creates some interesting
issues for forest managers.
Natural regeneration of jack pines is tied to wildfire. As Bill Cook stated, the species naturally "Grows fast, lives short, and dies a violent death." The pines are a shade-intolerant tree species, meaning it requires full sunlight to regenerate. That can only occur through stand-removing disturbances like fire that creates open clearings and prepares the soil so that jack pine seedlings could thrive. The pine's serotinous cones also require temperatures of about 120 degrees Fahrenheit in order to open and release seeds.
But, as we saw during our drive from Gwinn to Marquette, Jack pine budworm has been selectively attacking older trees (>50 years old) throughout the county. The dead and dying trees as a result of the budworm have created increased fuel loads in an area where the human populations is increasingly coming in contact with the forest. Any instance of fire, natural or man-made, would threatens homes and people who live, work, and play nearby.
County jack pine management takes the fire-adapted ecology into consideration. The Marquette County forest used to be (40-50 yrs ago) a single age class. In last few decades the county has been breaking it into blocks of different age classes. According to Bill this is to provide a steady flow of timber in the future instead of the boom/bust cycles inherent in a single age class and, even more importantly, for fire safety.
Management of the county's jack pine consists of clearcutting and planting stands on a staggered schedule to establish a diversity of age classes over the forest as a whole. In doing so the younger stands serve as wildfire buffers, should fire enter the forest.
Another benefit of establishing varied age class stands is wildlife habitat. One example is the endangered Kirtland's warblers. Kirtland's warblers have specific habitat requirements in open jack pine stands 15-20 feet tall. Several decades ago there were <200 hundred nesting pairs of the warbler in Michigan. Fish and Wildlife set a target goal of 830 nesting pairs in their prime habitat in the northern lower peninsula - jack pine country - and managed for the warbler by creating diverse age class stands. Bill reports that the warbler population has achieved the target set by Fish and Wildlife and is well on its way to recovery.
The site we visited had been clear cut several years prior and already exhibited good regeneration. It had been planted by hand instead of waiting several years for natural regeneration to occur. The county also encourages natural regeneration through slash management. Instead of using fire to open cones, the pines can also regenerate by falling to the ground where the temperature can reach up to 140 degrees during the summer. Jack pine management insists that slash be cut close to the ground to get cones into this hot zone.
Monies from timber sales go back to the county to help with regeneration and other management costs.
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Sponsored Dinner at Upfront
Thursday evening's dinner, sponsored by Louisiana-Pacific, was at Upfront & Company overlooking the shores of Lake Superior. Before dinner teachers were given examples, by Kathryn Russell, of how to integrate forestry education into their classrooms
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