Designing Low-Impact Operations

The key to maintaining environmentally sustainable biomass production operations is to design low-impact operations. These forest operations would have minimal impacts on soil, water, and biodiversity, and have high potential for improving the health and productivity of managed forest ecosystems. Many of the techniques for creating low impact operations have been discussed in the previous sections on soil values, hydrologic values, and biodiversity values. This section provides a management-oriented summary of these techniques which draws from materials summarized by Angelstam and others (2002), Burger (2002), Neary (2002), and Hakkila (2002), and provides specific focus on conserving the following three environmental resources.

• Soils
• Water
• Biodiversity

It is possible to maintain and enhance the site productivity of intensely managed forests in the long-term (Burger, 2002). Through the use of Adaptive Forest Management, forest management systems can be designed for plantations and naturally regenerated forests which adhere to the principles of sustainable forest management and gain certification under international protocols involving third party audits. These procedures will enable landowners and professional foresters to achieve sustainable forest management which will conserve soil, water, and biological values and ensure sustainability of Southern forests for future generations.

Best Management Practices have been formulated to enable forest managers to maintain and improve the environmental values of forests associated with soils, water, and biological diversity. Handbooks have been published for each of the 13 southern states. Following these guidelines is essential to maintaining and improving the quality of soil, water, and biodiversity in the Southern United States. The following list contains links for each of the Southern states Best Management Practices handbooks. These resources should be useful for landowners and professional foresters in developing sustainable forest management practices.

• Alabama
• Arkansas
• Florida
• Georgia
• Kentucky
• Louisiana
• Mississippi
• North Carolina
• Oklahoma
  
• South Carolina
• Tennessee
  
• Texas
  
• Virginia
  

For a collection of the water quality guidelines check out the Forestry BMP website.

Topics covered in this section of the Encyclopedia of Southern Bioenergy are complementary to topics covered from different perspectives in other sections of this encyclopedia titled Forest Management and Silviculture for Bioenergy Production, Introduction to Harvesting, Processing, Storage, and Delivery, and Economics.