Everyone is familiar with lumber, plywood, and paper—products that have dominated past demand in moist coniferous forests of the Pacific Northwest. New uses and technologies have emerged expanding opportunities for wood utilization. This changes what, when, and how wood may be harvested from the forest and how different management activities may intersect with restoration targets and ecosystem services. With these changes come differences in the characteristics of the resource available for wood products.
Results/Conclusions
Traditional products will not disappear. They are still in use and products such as mass timber are gaining traction, especially in the North American building market. Taking wood down to its elemental components; cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin, through biorefining opens up another realm of possibilities for producing high-value products like chemicals, fuels (solid, liquid, or gas), and high-value specialty products such as automotive parts and biomedical supplies. And although carbon may not be a wood product as we think of it, all wood products provide long-term carbon sequestration and can, in some cases, reduce fossil-fuel emissions if those products substitute for non-wood products that generate higher fossil emissions in their production and use. Scale of manufacturing and product depend on the available form of raw materials, accessibility, and market demands.