Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Production, Best Management Practices, And Market Impacts Of Forest Biomass Harvest And Collection In The Mid-Atlantic Region, William E. Smith

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Time motion studies were conducted at five mid-Atlantic sites that spanned various operations in West Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. The harvest systems included integrated harvests where chips were produced in the forest, roundwood systems where only roundwood was produced, and a centralized chipping system. The study collected overall productivity and machine utilization data at the various harvesting operations. The cost per green ton of woody biomass ranged from $18.46 to $39.8 resulting in an average of $30.33 among the five systems. Hauling had the highest average price per green ton at $9.10, while loading had the lowest at $1.73 per …

Optimization And Analytics Of Decarbonized Forest And Biomass Supply Chains, Xufeng Zhang

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

First, a data-driven holistic analysis framework was developed to aid the industrial development of forest biomass for bioenergy to promote the regional bioeconomy. Leveraging the existing but fragmented multi-source data, four components of industrial bioenergy development were integrated into the framework including spatial statistical analysis of biomass feedstock and bioenergy production, machine learning-based suitability assessment, bioenergy plant sites identification and ranking, and socio-economic impacts assessment. A case study was conducted for forest biomass to pellet fuel in the U.S. Mid-Atlantic region. Our results indicate that the great potential of forest biomass with high variation at the county level is primarily …

Effects Of Biomass Harvest On Eastern Red-Backed Salamanders, Patrick J. Ruhl

Open Access Theses

In a typical forest harvest, the volume of coarse woody debris (CWD) increases from nonmerchantable material (i.e., tree-tops, limbs, and small-diameter trees) left on the forest floor. Biomass harvesting removes much of this material for bioenergy production. When removed, ecosystem services associated with CWD, such as seedbed substrate, nutrient cycling, and essential wildlife habitat, is reduced. Woodland salamanders have strict microhabitat and soil moisture requirements that make them especially sensitive to timber harvest practices, particularly those that remove CWD, a primary habitat for the group.

I monitored the abundance of Eastern red-backed salamanders ( Plethodon cinereus ) in response to …