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With the concern about environmental issues, supply chain designers and managers need to make trade-offs between the environmental impacts and costs of a logistics network. We develop a multi-objective optimization model that minimizes the total cost and CO2 emissions of a regional timber logistics network and seeks for the simultaneous optimization of logistics network design and operation. The generic model is applied to a case study in Jiangle County in China. The Pareto solution set, derived by applying the normalized normal constraint method, shows the relationship between carbon emissions and total cost. Our results reveal that both network structure and the allocations of timber flows have effects on the Pareto solutions, suggesting the importance of considering network design and management together in logistics network analysis. The model results also indicate that though the current carbon price is hard to trigger the change of the timber logistics network structure in Jiangle County, it...

Removing excess biomass from fire-hazardous forests can serve dual purposes: enhancing the health and sustainability of forest ecosystems and supplying feedstock for energy production. The physical availability of this biomass is fairly well-known, yet availability does not necessarily translate into actual supply. We assess the perception and behavior of private forestland owners in the southern United States with respect to thinning overstocked forests for bioenergy production. Landowner perception is then integrated with the USDA Forest Service's Fuel Treatment Evaluator to estimate the biomass supply from fuel treatments on non-industrial private timberlands in the region. Due to competing uses for lumber and pulp/paper products, only about one-third of this biomass could be used as bioenergy feedstock. Between 6 and 66% of landowners would consider thinning overstocked forests for bioenergy purposes depending upon whether financial incentives and technical assistance are provided. Accounting for comp...

Various biomass sources can potentially be used for biofuel production, and many of these same biomass sources also have other uses. This raises an important question about biomass utilization allocation. We demonstrate an economic principle for biomass allocation by examining the profitability of woody biomass utilization in a simple two-product case. We then develop a mixed-integer programming model for allocating multiple biomass resources in the production of different biofuels and bioproducts. Our model combines biomass utilization allocation with biofuel supply chain optimization. The model is applied to solving the forest biomass utilization allocation problem for East Texas in the southern United States. We find that besides biofuel prices, production scale and CO2 offset credits also significantly affect biomass utilization allocation. Our findings validate our integrative model approach to addressing biomass allocation and provide useful implications for enhancing the efficient utilization of forest biomass. Keywords: forest biomass, biofuel supply chain, greenhouse gas offset, mathematical programming, southern United States. Received 10 October 2010, Revised 20 July 2012, Accepted 24 October 2012.

Soil nutrient loss is a major concern with removing forest residues for biofuel production. Understanding the impact of residue removal on site productivity via field experiment is costly and time consuming. We developed an analytical framework and a simulation approach for determining optimal forest residue removals, which account for both the benefits of biomass and greenhouse gas offset and the cost of soil productivity loss. We derived the relationship between residue removals and the prices of timber, biomass and greenhouse gases. The marginal cost of soil productivity loss associated with residue removals from loblolly pine (Pinus taeda L.) plantations in southern USA ranges from US$2.18 to 11.20/oven-dry tonne depending upon removal intensity. Given the cost of soil productivity loss, residue removal intensity will be much smaller than the quantity of biomass physically available.