The Silver Lining of the Red Forest

When federal officials announced last month that most, if not all, of Colorado’s old lodgepole pine trees will be dead within five years, many Coloradans viewed it as a tragedy. The fact that every stately lodgepole will soon be rust-colored, sad and dry is hard to imagine, let alone accept.

But there’s always a silver lining.

Widespread death of homogenous forests could be good for the ecosystem, for one—a greater diversity of trees will be better for wildlife and fire prevention. Loss of lodgepoles might mean the reintroduction of aspen in some areas, for example, and a greater diversity of forage for many animals.

Then there is the potential use of forest fuels for energy. Many people believe the country is running out of oil, or at the very least cheap oil, so growth in alternative fuels is a must.

Some believe trees, as that cryptic sticker says, are the answer.

“I think we can conclude that we probably need to address our forest health issues. At the same time, we also have a need to address our pending energy crisis,” said Kurt Mackes, a Colorado State University professor, at a forest health and energy conference last week.



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Wayne Shepperd breezed through statistics about potential forest biomass—plant material that could be used for fuel—and the need to diversify forests through thinning and fire.

Shepperd is retired from the Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station but is still a consultant and considered one of the foremost experts on forest ecology in the Rockies.

His most striking stat was a graph of a forest stand whose records go back all the way to 1450. It looks like the front part of a bell curve. Trees from the pre-Columbus era are mapped through their lifespan as a straight line, and younger trees’ lives are marked in increasing order. The graph rises slowly and gradually and it’s clear that trees of many different ages lived together in this patch of forest. Then the graph hits 1870, and the lines stop. The bell shoots clear upward and from then on, the trees’ age lines are the same length.

Settlement time is often blamed for the growth of today’s homogenous forests, as miners and loggers felled entire chunks of forest for timber. The trees all grew back at the same time, and many of those are the ones now succumbing to the mountain pine beetle.

Sadly, many of the beetle-killed trees might not be much use for the timber industry, because the trees are only useable for two to three years after they die. That’s a pretty small window for timber use, so there will be far more trees left to rot or burn than ones that will be made into something useful.

But many foresters believe we can prevent similar outbreaks in the future by undoing our ancestors’ work and either thinning forests or letting them burn, regenerating naturally. And the leftovers from that work could be useful for years to come.

Lodgepoles actually evolved to thrive after fires—their seeds stay in a hard cone and are released in the intense heat of a forest fire. The burned trees provide nutrients for the new ones that will take their place.

But in many areas of Colorado’s 22-plus million acres of forest land, huge fires aren’t an option, as residents and tourists increasingly make their homes among the trees.

So scientists like Shepperd believe thinning is the best option—selectively cutting down some trees to make a less-dense forest.

The work is done every season to help prevent fire, and the piles of felled trees are usually burned.

Some believe those slash piles are a potentially valuable resource.

Shepperd took part in a study in 2004 that examined how much biomass might be available from forest thinning efforts in Colorado. The study found that if 2.5 million acres were thinned, a little more than 10 percent, we’d be left with about 65.5 million dry tons of wood.

It could be used for a variety of purposes, including lumber for houses, landscape material or other uses.

The problem is, many of the trees to be thinned would be small, less than 4 inches in diameter at chest height, and so wouldn’t be valuable for the relatively small timber industry in Colorado.

Craig Jones, who coordinates a Colorado State Parks and State Forest Service program intended to make forest slash available to businesses, is trying to change that.

The key is to keep things sustainable, local and small-scale, he said.

The smaller trees could be used as woody biomass, which can be used for heating, or even for biofuels like cellulosic ethanol or bio-oil. But there are several obstacles to bringing those fuels to the mass market.

That’s where pyrolysis comes in.



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Pyrolysis uses heat to essentially melt organic material like wood chips and coax it into forming hydrocarbon chains, which are refined into a biological oil.

The heat, more than 800 degrees Fahrenheit, breaks up polymers of sugar inside the wood. The key is to remove oxygen, so that the other elements like carbon and hydrogen can be rearranged.

Using a process similar to traditional oil refining, the bio-oil is made into a kind of diesel. Oxygen is rejected in the form of steam water or carbon dioxide; other gases like methane are also formed.

John Scahill, project manager at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy office in Golden, said those gases are recycled into the combustion cycle, helping generate the heat to melt the wood chips. It is an efficient loop.

The result is a liquid hydrocarbon compound.

“Those finished compounds are indistinguishable from what you put in your gas tank at your local gas station,” he said.

The last byproduct of the process is char, like charcoal, which contains carbon and other elements. It’s a good fertilizer, helping other trees grow so that they, too, can be made into fuel—and it sequesters carbon.

It sounds too good to be true. The technology is brand new, only about four years old, which helps explain why it isn’t widespread yet. It’s also not efficient enough yet to be practical.

In fuel production, energy return on energy investment is key—you need a net gain of energy for the energy you put in to create it. Bio-oil still has a very low return, according to the Department of Energy.

But Scahill believes its time will come.

“If you would have asked me this when oil was $40 a barrel, the answer would have been, ‘No, this is not economically feasible.’ But at $100 a barrel, maybe,” he said.

Other, cheaper uses for forest biomass are already success stories in Boulder and Jackson counties, where biomass-fueled heaters provide energy-efficient, carbon-neutral warmth. U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar praised the town of Walden for using a biomass heater to warm the high school.

While pyrolysis and biomass heaters sound promising, many foresters and environmental advocates are also advocating cautious optimism.

Rocky Smith, who co-founded Colorado Wild almost 10 years ago and now works for the non-profit organization’s Forest Watch campaign, said prudence was important.

“I’m not saying we should do nothing, but we have to be very strategic,” he said.

But he was optimistic that solutions could be found.

“I think we have to create a model that is sustainable, and I think we can do it,” he said.

Carl Spaulding, president of the Colorado Timber Industry Association and a project manager for Renewable Fiber in Fort Lupton, said forests can’t meet all the energy needs, but it’s worth a shot.

“We can either use it or lose it,” he said. “We can do this if we use teamwork.”

The relationship between forest health and energy is still somewhat shaky.

Environmental advocates argue that fire suppression and clear-cutting for timber caused these problems. They are hesitant to push for trees as an energy source, which would create more demand for logging.

Timber advocates and some foresters say lack of management is the main source of problems—the woods have run amok, and they must now be corralled, so people might as well use them for good.

They’re both right. The good news is that those divergent views could end up forging a symbiotic relationship, driven by two separate crises but one common goal.

We are leaving a massive footprint on this planet and like frozen February grass, it will not spring back quickly.

From a warmer atmosphere, which most scientists agree is human-caused, to unnatural forests, humans have made a mark and now we have to think about how to fix it.

Sometimes those solutions come about only in the face of adversity. If people didn’t have to worry about dwindling oil supplies or increasing pollution, they might not be looking around for another option. And if Colorado’s forests weren’t turning red, they might not see the option right in front of their faces.

Two wrongs, in a sense, might make something right.