Tour INTERFOR's Hammond Cedar Mill
On Friday, we headed out to Maple Ridge for a tour of INTERFOR's Hammond Cedar Mill then continued out to UBC's Malcolm Knapp Research Forest at the foothills of Golden Ears Provincial Park.
Hammond Cedar Mill Tour
INTERFOR's Hammond Cedar Mill is one of the largest Western Red Cedar producers in the world. Each year, the mill produces 125 million board feet of cedar products used for exterior siding, paneling, decking and a variety of uses in overseas markets. Our group was met in the parking lot by Doug Clitheroe, Peter Edwards, and several other guides. Teachers were given a safety briefing and then our guides took us in smaller groups through the mill. Teachers were exposed to all the technology that is involved in producing lumber products as well as how mills like Hammond are maximizing utilization of resources.
The Hammond mill sits on the Fraiser River and adheres to environmental regulations determined by the Federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans. 70% of their logs come from INTERFOR harvesting. Logs are sorted into three categories:
- Gang logs=8-12 inches in diameter
- Merchant logs=12-24 inches in diameter
- Oversize logs=24-72 inches in diameter
These logs get processed into lumber of varying grades. The lumber grades include: Clear grade, usually from the outer sapwood of oversize logs, used for bevel siding; Shop grade, which is cut into shorter lengths and finger-jointed; and Common grade, used for dimension lumber.
UBC Malcolm Knapp Research Forest
Our
host for the next part of the day was Cheryl Power, Resident Forester for the
UBC Malcolm Knapp Research Forest. Cheryl rode with us in the bus from the
Hammond Cedar Mill and gave us an overview of the forest and its activities.
At the entrance to the research forest we picked up Michael Main, Assistant Silviculturalist for the UBC Malcolm Knapp Research Forest. On the way up to the harvesting site he gave us a briefing on the silvicultural basis for harvesting.
The site we visited was a 18 hectare site where foresters were conducting commercial thinning of the stand. The bulk of the eastern part of the forest had been logged and burned approximately 70 years previous and had naturally regenerated very successfully with douglas-fir, hemlock, and western red cedar, as witnessed by the many trees present on the site. Thinning had been conducted over a 30 hectare tract since about 1999. Foresters were trying to capture mortality by thinning the site, selling the removed logs to benefit the research forest. The thinning was only conducted if it was economically viable but any thinning done inevitably benefited the site by the remaining trees more room to grow. The prescription for this particular site was to reduce the density of trees by roughly half, from 571 to 207 trees per hectare.
Once at the site, teachers witnessed a felling demonstration while Paul Lawson, Manager of the UBC Malcolm Knapp Research Forest, explained some of the economic basis of harvesting.
Teachers had a short opportunity to learn about forest measurement tools such as the increment borer to measure a trees age, the forester's tape to measure a tree's diameter (at breast height, DBH,) and the clinometer used to gauge a tree's height. Two summer students at the research forest, Inga Smith and Andrea Reitman also demonstrated a laser rangefinder used to determine distances.
The UBC Malcolm Knapp Research Forest was established by a Crown Grant to the University of British Columbia in 1949, as a facility for research, demonstration, and education in the field of forestry and allied sciences. At the UBC Research Forest we will learn about Silviculture, Forestry Research, and Harvesting Methods.
From an ecological perspective, the Research Forest falls entirely into the Coast Western Hemlock (CWH) bio/geo/climatic zone, with the lower half of the forest in the dry maritime (dm) subzone, and the upper half in the very wet maritime (vm) subzone.
The Research Forest receives a lot of precipitation, mostly in the form of rain--from about 2200 mm per year at the southern end of the forest to about 3000 mm per year at the north end. Snow is rare at the south end of the forest, while the higher elevations to the north are typically snow covered for about four months of the year. This climate has a significant impact on the type of forest growing naturally on our land. The forests are dominated by coniferous ("evergreen") trees which are typically large and fast-growing, the most common of which are the Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii), the western red cedar (Thuja plicata) and the western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla).
Historically, the forest has been shaped by two major forces: fire and logging. In 1868, a large fire swept through the western side of the forest, burning everything but the wettest pockets of land around lakes and in stream basins. Most of this area is now covered with a mixture of Douglas-fir, western red cedar and western hemlock, although the some parts of the old growth which the fire did not burn remain intact. In 1931, a spark from logging equipment set off a large fire which burned out of control for more than a month. When the fire was finally out, the logging was abandoned, and the forest regenerated naturally to what is now 60-70 year old second growth, made up mostly of western hemlock and western red cedar, with a small amount of Douglas-fir.
The Forest currently consists of a few separate age classes of forest.
- On the upper end of the range, some small patches of 400+ year-old growth forest remain intact.
- The forest age then jumps down to 120-year-old stands, which represent about half of the western side of the forest.
- Yet another age gap exits between these stands and the 70-year-old stands which cover most of the eastern half of the forest.
Forest harvesting since 1949 has led to a range of age classes from 40-year-old second growth to 1-year-old second or third growth throughout the area.
Silviculture
An integral part of forest management is ensuring that harvested areas regrow healthy, vigorous stands of young trees to form the next forest generation. This practice is called silviculture, which in essence means the growing of trees. A young cedar seedling planted in the shadow of an old growth cedar stump. This seedling, planted in 1999, will form part of the third forest to grow on this site since the 1920's.
Picnic Lunch at Loon Lake
Our lunch stop on Friday was at Loon Lake within the UBC Malcolm Knapp Research Forest. Here we enjoyed lunch in the camp dining hall and had a chance to take some group photos on the lake before heading off for more afternoon activities.
The camp at Loon Lake has a long tradition of providing an area for forestry and environmental education as well as outdoor recreation. Originally built in 1948-9 to house the UBC Faculty of Forestry field camps, it continues to be used for this purpose every spring, and today many other educational groups take advantage of this idyllic setting for their outdoor education needs. In addition, a wide range of adult and youth groups rent the facility year round for retreats, workshops and other events that are enhanced by the secluded wilderness setting.
