In recent years, Canada has endured some of its most devastating wildfire seasons on record, largely fuelled by extreme weather conditions exacerbated by climate change.
This escalating crisis underscores the urgent need for more robust wildfire management and climate adaptation strategies. In response, FPInnovations has become an increasingly critical resource, providing expertise on various fire-related projects as well as best practices to maximize productivity.
Salvaging after a wildfire has many consequences on harvesting operations. The safety of the workers must be assessed before any field work for health risks, falling trees, debris on roads and bridges, and biohazards. FPInnovations studies on harvesting burnt wood revealed a cost increase for recovering burnt wood as well as a decrease in productivity. As the expense of cutting logs increases, the value of the harvested wood declines, hence timing is critical for the sawmills, the burnt wood must be harvested and processed in the first three years, if possible.
Once the logs enter the mill yard, fibre degradation is already present. This is due to singed-deep bark, and cracking due to the severe moisture loss and insect damage, which reduces the yield. Maintenance within the sawmills is also increased to deal with the carbon dust. The debarkers will produce almost twice the amount of hog (bark and whitewood) compared to green wood to decrease the carbonized wood that enters the mill.
There are significant concerns for the quality of those chips when they are used by pulp mills. Kraft pulp mills have strict standards and cannot tolerate charred wood contamination. The additional effort required to process burnt wood chips would not be feasible. On the other hand, mechanical pulp mills have developed ways to utilize burnt wood. For example, newsprint TMP can use a percentage of burnt softwood chips 12–24 months after a fire. However, this approach comes with challenges, such as reduced brightness, strength, and drainage properties.
As Canada grapples with increasingly severe wildfire seasons, the forest industry faces escalating challenges, from safety hazards in operations to significant process production losses. FPInnovations can provide the Canadian Forest Industry with timely solutions to enable the industry to manage the financial and operational risks posed by wildfires.
