Background

Featuring a broad alliance of private industry and educational institutions, the Northwest Advanced Renewables Alliance (NARA) takes a holistic approach to building a supply chain based on using forest residuals to make aviation biofuel. The alliance is tasked with increasing efficiency for each supply chain step from forestry operations to conversion processes; creating new bio-based products; providing economic, environmental and social sustainability analyses; engaging stakeholder groups; and improving bioenergy literacy for students, educators, professionals and the general public.

Our Work

We are supporting two analyses for NARA. A representative forest biomass model was developed for short rotation private industrial forest management in Grays Harbor county, Washington using the Forest Vegetation Simulator. This analysis used Oregon State University's Gradient Nearest Neighbor program to represent forest inventory in the county, and representative acres were harvested to match average board foot volume harvest levels in the county from 2004 to 2014. Bone dry tons of biomass was calculated for branch, top, stem, root, snag, and log biomass, including growth, harvest, and decay on harvested acres in Grays Harbor county.

The Flathead Indian Reservation is located in western Montana, and is surrounded by the Lolo, Flathead, and Kootenai National Forests. An analysis of available timber harvest residuals has been completed for the reservation. We are helping analyze potential residuals on the adjacent National Forests if stewardship contracts were implemented under the 2004 Tribal Forest Protection Act.

More Information

http://nararenewables.org/