Bioenergy needs a pathway from forest residue decaying or burned on-site

[aldivi]

This is for version 3. This is for exploring the effects of utilizing more of the slash. This amounts to adding complementary paths in the management table parallel to, e.g., "understory2atmos" such as "understory2energy," so that instead of this biomass decaying or being burned it could be utilized for energy. We may need to make explicit paths, such as '2decay,' '2pileburn,' and '2energy' in place of '2atmos.' This way the burned fractions can be changed in the input file.

[aldivi]

Please look into the literature for estimates of the fraction of slash burned under forest management practices. I suspect that our 25% number is low.

[aldivi]

This should be more generally characterized as a pathway for removing understory and dead carbon from the forest so that it can go to either bioenergy or other products rather than just pile-burned or decayed to the atmosphere.

[msimmond]

@aldivi I found some info on post-harvest slash combustion vs decomposition in this ARB report. See table 1 on page A2.1 in sec 2.1.2. It looks they are estimating 90% of logging residue from clearcut and partial cuts is "extracted" for bioenergy, 5% is pile-burned, and 5% decays on site. However in the text it says "95% of partial harvests and clearcuts had residues scattered intentionally post-processing at landing site (Stewart and Nakamura 2012)." Is this maybe referring to 95% of the 90% that was "extracted" for bioenergy? battles 2013_ARB California Forest and Rangeland Greenhouse Gas Inventory Development FINAL REPORT .pdf

The EPA uses the code SCC 2810015000 or SCC 2810005000 (CA-specific) for managed burning of slash in the national GHG inventory. If we could find a report we might be able to determine the proportion of slash burned from their methods section, or at least contact them about it.

[aldivi]

this has been implemented and merged with the master