Chippewa National Forest Conducts Biomass Workshop

With the increased emphasis on renewable forms of energy nationally and in Minnesota, the Chippewa conducted a workshop for its employees on biomass.

With the increased emphasis on renewable forms of energy nationally and in Minnesota, the Chippewa National Forest conducted a workshop for its employees on biomass. The session was designed to raise awareness of its employees and start a dialog on how the forest can produce biomass for the public.

The day started with a presentation on the Minnesota Forest Resources Council's (MFRC)guidelines for biomass harvesting. MFRC's guidelines serve as the states best management practices and are the first such guidelines in the nation. Dick Rossman, a Minnesota Department of National Resources employee and head of the team that developed the guidelines led the discussion. Forest Soil Scientist, Jim Barott then gave a presentation on areas in the Forest Plan that dealt with things to be aware of when considering biomass harvesting, such as retaining slash on certain soil types and maintaining species diversity.

The participants then went to the field. The sites visited consisted of one where the slash was piled and burned, a site where slash was left on site, and a site that had a broadcast burn. The first two sites were designed to show a possible before and after biomass harvest. The discussion centered on the pro and cons biomass harvesting including site impacts, how different harvesting prescriptions could aid in biomass harvesting and how the districts were documenting and providing biomass opportunities to purchasers. The last site was chosen to facilitate a discussion on where biomass harvesting could help with fuels reduction and where fire was still the best tool. There also a discussion on the differences between the amount of material needed to be left on site to meet the MFRC guidelines and whether that would that would meet fuel reduction guidelines.

At the last site the group was joined by Carl Bleiler, a local logger who also has a biomass grinder. Carl gave a good presentation on biomass harvesting from a producers perspective. He talked about the site conditions he looks for in a sale that would be necessary for economical biomass removal. These included the amount of material available, condition of the access road and proximity of the logging site to the delivery point. Carl has been running the grinder for about 15 months and he also spoke to the learning curve his crew went through to be most efficient in the production and some the challenges they overcame in developing his operation.