Spatial and dynamic analysis of timber and biomass supply in Minnesota

This research examines the ability of commercial forest lands in Minnesota to meet future timber demand targets and at the same time meet hypothetical future biomass energy requirements. It also assesses the potential for certain agricultural lands to be converted to short rotation poplar production so as to reduce harvest pressure on commercial forests. Timber and biomass prices under several product demands, resource base, and environmental constraints were estimated.;The output from the model is the marginal cost of delivered timber products, location and quantity of forest and agricultural lands harvested, and total costs of meeting the demand target goals in each planning period. The results indicate that industrial demand for all timber products analyzed in this study can be satisfied over the planning horizon, if additional agricultural lands are devoted to poplar production. The addition is made necessary because of aspen, for which existing industrial requirements cannot be sustained over the planning horizon if only existing forest lands are used. The combination of restricted forest and agricultural lands results in higher marginal costs than the combination of unrestricted forest and agricultural lands. The difference in these marginal costs shows the opportunity cost of environmental mitigation. Since it turns out that the power plants modeled in this study would most cost effectively acquire fuelwood from existing forest lands, substantial savings could be achieved if the plants are located in the northern part of the state where major concentrations of the forest lands exist, rather than the currently proposed southwestern locations.;Existing commercial forest production was modeled under environmentally restricted and unrestricted management practices. Agricultural lands were represented by a subset of lands formerly in the Conservation Reserve Program. Timber product demands at six traditional forest markets and biomass demands at two power plants were considered. Marginal costs of delivered timber and fuelwood products over the planning horizon under different environmentally restricted and unrestricted land base scenarios were estimated using a harvest scheduling model, a transportation model based on the actual road network, and a prescription writer to simulate stand growth after any harvesting activity.