Green furniture: sustainable design guidelines for the Irish furniture and wood products industry.

This thesis presents the research and development of sustainable design guidelines for the furniture and wood products industry, suitable for sustainably enhancing design, manufacturing and associated activities. This sustainable guideline is based on secondary research conducted on subject areas such as ‘eco’ design, ‘green’ branding and ‘green’ consumerism, as well as an examination of existing certifications and sustainable tools techniques and methodologies, national and international drivers for sustainable development and an overview of sustainability in the Irish furniture manufacturing context. The guideline was further developed through primary research. This consisted of a focus group attended by leading Irish designers, manufacturers and academics in the area of furniture and wood products. This group explored the question of ‘green branding’ saturation in the market and the viability of investing in sustainability just yet. Participants stated that they felt the market for ‘green’ products is evolving very slowly and that there is no metric or legal framework present to audit whether or not companies are producing products that really embody sustainability. All the participants believed that developing and introducing a new certification process to incorporate a sustainable design process was a viable and necessary solution to protecting Irish furniture and wood manufacturers going forward. For the purposes of the case study, the author investigated a ‘sustainable’ design process for Team woodcraft, Ltd., through the design and development of a ‘sustainable’ children’s furniture range. The case study followed a typical design and development process; detailing customer design specifications, concept development and refinement and cumulating in final prototype, as well as associated engineering drawings. Based on this primary and secondary research, seven fundamental core principles for this sustainable guideline have been identified by the author. The author then used these core principles to expand into guidelines for the basis of proposed new Irish sustainable design guidelines for the furniture and wood products industry, the concept of which the author has named ‘Green Dot’. The author suggests that the ‘Green Dot’ brand or logo could be used to market an umbrella network of Irish furniture designers and manufactures who implement the recommended sustainable techniques.

A Modeling Analysis of Changing Global Land Use as affected by Changing Demands for Wood Products

The 21st century has brought new challenges for forest management at a time when globalization in world trade is increasing and global climate change is becoming increasingly apparent. In addition to various goods and services like food, feed, timber or biofuels being provided to humans, forest ecosystems are a large store of terrestrial carbon and account for a major part of the carbon exchange between the atmosphere and the land surface. Depending on the stage of the ecosystems and/or management regimes, forests can be either sinks, or sources of carbon. At the global scale, rapid economic development and a growing world population have raised much concern over the use of natural resources, especially forest resources. The challenging question is how can the global demands for forest commodities be satisfied in an increasingly globalised economy, and where could they potentially be produced? For this purpose, wood demand estimates need to be integrated in a framework, which is able to adequately handle the competition for land between major land-use options such as residential land or agricultural land. This thesis is organised in accordance with the requirements to integrate the simulation of forest changes based on wood extraction in an existing framework for global land-use modelling called LandSHIFT. Accordingly, the following neuralgic points for research have been identified: (1) a review of existing global-scale economic forest sector models (2) simulation of global wood production under selected scenarios (3) simulation of global vegetation carbon yields and (4) the implementation of a land-use allocation procedure to simulate the impact of wood extraction on forest land-cover. Modelling the spatial dynamics of forests on the global scale requires two important inputs: (1) simulated long-term wood demand data to determine future roundwood harvests in each country and (2) the changes in the spatial distribution of woody biomass stocks to determine how much of the resource is available to satisfy the simulated wood demands. First, three global timber market models are reviewed and compared in order to select a suitable economic model to generate wood demand scenario data for the forest sector in LandSHIFT. The comparison indicates that the ‘Global Forest Products Model’ (GFPM) is most suitable for obtaining projections on future roundwood harvests for further study with the LandSHIFT forest sector. Accordingly, the GFPM is adapted and applied to simulate wood demands for the global forestry sector conditional on selected scenarios from the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and the Global Environmental Outlook until 2050. Secondly, the Lund-Potsdam-Jena (LPJ) dynamic global vegetation model is utilized to simulate the change in potential vegetation carbon stocks for the forested locations in LandSHIFT. The LPJ data is used in collaboration with spatially explicit forest inventory data on aboveground biomass to allocate the demands for raw forest products and identify locations of deforestation. Using the previous results as an input, a methodology to simulate the spatial dynamics of forests based on wood extraction is developed within the LandSHIFT framework. The land-use allocation procedure specified in the module translates the country level demands for forest products into woody biomass requirements for forest areas, and allocates these on a five arc minute grid. In a first version, the model assumes only actual conditions through the entire study period and does not explicitly address forest age structure. Although the module is in a very preliminary stage of development, it already captures the effects of important drivers of land-use change like cropland and urban expansion. As a first plausibility test, the module performance is tested under three forest management scenarios. The module succeeds in responding to changing inputs in an expected and consistent manner. The entire methodology is applied in an exemplary scenario analysis for India. A couple of future research priorities need to be addressed, particularly the incorporation of plantation establishments; issue of age structure dynamics; as well as the implementation of a new technology change factor in the GFPM which can allow the specification of substituting raw wood products (especially fuelwood) by other non-wood products.

In the matter of: public hearing before Special Industry Committee no. 41-D for the lumber and wood products industry in Puerto Rico. September 23, 1958 ... San Juan, Puerto Rico. Reporters: Genevieve Biolsi [and] John F. Hrozencik.

Maynard E. Pirsig, chairman.

Technology and its impact on labor in four industries : lumber and wood products, footwear, hydraulic cement, wholesale trade.

"November 1986."

The Japanese solid wood products market : profile and outlook /

"April 1989."

A Competitive assessment of the U.S. solid wood products industry /

Item 231-B-1

Location model for CCA-treated - wood waste remediation units

Dissertação apresentada como requisito parcial para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Ciência e Sistemas de Informação Geográfica

Experimental Reinforcement of Wood Beams

Rehabilitation is becoming more and more usual in the construction sector in Portugal. The introduction of newer construction materials and technical know-how of integrating different materials for achieving desired engineering goals is an important step to the development of the sector. Wood industry is also getting more and more adapted to composite technologies with the introduction of the so called “highly engineered wood products” and with the use of modification treatments. This work is an attempt to explain the viability of using stainless steel and glass fibre reinforced polymer (GFRP) as reinforcements in wood beams. This thesis specifically focuses on the flexural behaviour of Portuguese Pine unmodified and modified wood beams. Two types of modification were used: 1,3-dimethylol-4,5- dihydroxyethyleneurea (DMDHEU) resin and amid wax. The behaviour of the material was analysed with a nonlinear model. The latter model simulates the behaviour of the reinforced wood beams under flexural loading. Small-scale beams (1:15) were experimented in flexural bending and the experimental results obtained were compared with the analytical model results. The experiments confirm the viability of the reinforcing schemes and the working procedures. Experimental results showed fair agreement with the nonlinear model. A strength increase between 15% and 80% was achieved. Stiffness increased by 40% to 50% in beams reinforced with steel but no significant increase was achieved with the glass fibre reinforcement.

Emerging Threats to Iowa's Forests, Communities, Wood Industry and Economy, 2013

Iowa’s three million acres of forest land provide environmental benefits to all Iowans in terms of soil erosion control, air quality, and water quality. In 2013, more than 6.5 million trees died. Within those trees there were more than 125 million board feet of wood, compared to 98 million board feet of wood harvested. This level of mortality is the highest level reported from US Forest Service inventories in twenty years. This is disturbing when considering more than 18,000 Iowans are employed in the wood products and manufacturing industry, generating nearly $4 billion in annual sales, more than $900 million in annual payroll and more than $25 million to private woodland owners annually from the sale of timber.

Wood consumption rates of forest species by subterranean termites (Isoptera) under field conditions

Termites are well -known for their capacity to damage and destroy wood and wood products of all kinds in the tropics and subtropics. A field test was undertaken to evaluate variations in wood consumption of Pinus sp. and three species of Eucalyptus by subterranean termites. The test consisted of wooden stakes of each species being initially submitted to water immersion for 0, 24, 48 and 72 h, and buried in the ground to natural infestation by subterranean termites for an exposure period of 30, 45 and 60 days. Three species of subterranean termites were identified: Heterotermes longiceps (Snyder), Coptotermes gestroi (Wasmann) (Isoptera: Rhinotermitidae), and Nasutitermes jaraguae (Holmgren) (Isoptera: Termitidae). This is the first record of occurrence of H. longiceps in the state of Rio de Janeiro. Although the wood-consumption rates were not correlated significantly with their wood densities, there was a tendency of the softwoods (E. robusta and Pinus sp.) to be more consumed by subterranean termites than the woods of intermediate hardness (E. pellita and E. urophylla). Among the eucalyptus, E. robusta showed to be more susceptible to attack by subterranean termites than E. pellita and E. urophylla

Determination of fiber length and juvenile and mature wood zones from Hevea brasiliensis trees grown in Brazil

The aim of this study was to verify the average fiber length and the juvenile and mature wood zones from Hevea brasiliensis proveniences from a reforestation area in São Paulo, Brazil. For this purpose, five Hevea brasiliensis trees were randomly collected from a 50-year-old plantation, located in Balsamo, São Paulo, Brazil. The trees were cut and five flat sawn boards were obtained. The juvenile and mature wood zones were determined by fiber length measurement from the pith to the bark. The results showed that: (a) the juvenile wood of this species occurred approx. between 40 and 55 mm, from the pith, and from this point forward, the mature wood zone was found; (b) there was a significant difference between the average fiber length of juvenile wood (1.26 mm) and mature wood (1.51 mm).

Physical and mechanical properties of thermally modified wood from E. grandis

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)