Woodlot
Encyclopedia
A woodlot is a term used in North America
to refer to a segment of a woodland
or forest
capable of small-scale production of forest products such as wood fuel
, sap for maple syrup
, sawlog
s, as well as recreation
al uses like bird watching, bushwalking, and wildflower
appreciation. In Britain
a woodlot would be called a wood
, woodland
or coppice.
Many woodlots occur as part of a larger farm
or as buffers and undevelopable land between these and other property types such as housing subdivisions
, industrial forests, or public properties (highways, park
s, watershed
s, etc). Very small woodlots can occur where a subdivision has not met its development potential, or where terrain does not easily permit other uses. Very large woodlots (hundreds of acres) might emerge where profitable wood species have been depleted by commercial logging
practices or compromised by diseases, leaving little choice but to divide and liquidate the real estate for other purposes.
One distinguishing characteristic of a woodlot is that the parcel size or quality of wood on the parcel does not generally justify full-scale commercial harvesting, leaving many woodlots as private investments by individuals. On the other hand, good forest management
practices, even on a small scale, may create a sustainable source of products, which can significantly contribute to the aggregate inventory available to forest-product consumers.
Some jurisdictions encourage woodlots (over subdivisions) by providing property tax
reductions (see, e.g., Current use
) or by subsidized consulting and management plans. For example, a state or provincial government may recognize the important contributions that small, non-industrial land owners make to conservation of natural resources, and provide administrative tools, information and even funding.
There may also be income tax
advantages for those who are able to operate their woodlot as a small business, or even as a passive investment (e.g., capital equipment depreciation, inventory depletion and operating expense deductions).
Depending on soil
s, aspect
, parcel size and plant species and age, a properly managed woodlot might provide sufficient firewood annually for heating a number of local homes, as well as sawlogs and poles for periodic construction or repair of out-buildings. In fact, some states (including New Hampshire
) grant woodlot owners an exemption from harvest "yield taxes" otherwise payable on limited quantities taken for personal use. A suitably capable and equipped woodlot owner may enjoy doing the work himself (simple forestry, road-building, selective logging, firewood processing, etc). Others might prefer sharing the costs with similarly situated neighbors to have several adjacent parcels managed simultaneously by local logger
s. Otherwise, hiring professionals to reap small quantities of firewood may be too expensive to be cost-effective.
With the relatively high cost of fossil fuels for heating, a personal woodlot may be held as a biomass
energy "savings account". When fuel prices go up, the woodlot pays for itself by providing firewood. When fuel prices go down, the woodlot can be left to mature, or managed for improved output of other products with an eventual higher profit.
However, because of the slow nature of tree growth (for most valuable firewood trees), the profitability of many woodlots must be viewed as a long-term investment, with 20 to 50 years of management necessary before harvesting at a profit. Furthermore, in areas undergoing development, market pressures may ultimately result in poorly managed woodlots being sold and subdivided, often merely because property taxes become unbearable.
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
to refer to a segment of a woodland
Woodland
Ecologically, a woodland is a low-density forest forming open habitats with plenty of sunlight and limited shade. Woodlands may support an understory of shrubs and herbaceous plants including grasses. Woodland may form a transition to shrubland under drier conditions or during early stages of...
or forest
Forest
A forest, also referred to as a wood or the woods, is an area with a high density of trees. As with cities, depending where you are in the world, what is considered a forest may vary significantly in size and have various classification according to how and what of the forest is composed...
capable of small-scale production of forest products such as wood fuel
Wood fuel
Wood fuel is wood used as fuel. The burning of wood is currently the largest use of energy derived from a solid fuel biomass. Wood fuel can be used for cooking and heating, and occasionally for fueling steam engines and steam turbines that generate electricity. Wood fuel may be available as...
, sap for maple syrup
Maple syrup
Maple syrup is a syrup usually made from the xylem sap of sugar maple, red maple, or black maple trees, although it can also be made from other maple species such as the bigleaf maple. In cold climates, these trees store starch in their trunks and roots before the winter; the starch is then...
, sawlog
Sawlog
The term sawlog refers to that part of a tree stem that will be processed at a sawmill. This is in contrast to those other parts of the stem that are designated pulpwood. The differences are that sawlogs will be greater in diameter, straighter and have a lower knot frequency.Sawlogs most often come...
s, as well as recreation
Recreation
Recreation is an activity of leisure, leisure being discretionary time. The "need to do something for recreation" is an essential element of human biology and psychology. Recreational activities are often done for enjoyment, amusement, or pleasure and are considered to be "fun"...
al uses like bird watching, bushwalking, and wildflower
Wildflower
A wildflower is a flower that grows wild, meaning it was not intentionally seeded or planted. Yet "wildflower" meadows of a few mixed species are sold in seed packets. The term "wildflower" has been made vague by commercial seedsmen who are interested in selling more flowers or seeds more...
appreciation. In Britain
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
a woodlot would be called a wood
Wood (disambiguation)
Wood, a natural material produced by the growth of plants, mainly trees and shrubsWood may also refer to:*Woodland, a small forest*Wood , a type club used in the sport of golf...
, woodland
Woodland
Ecologically, a woodland is a low-density forest forming open habitats with plenty of sunlight and limited shade. Woodlands may support an understory of shrubs and herbaceous plants including grasses. Woodland may form a transition to shrubland under drier conditions or during early stages of...
or coppice.
Many woodlots occur as part of a larger farm
Farm
A farm is an area of land, or, for aquaculture, lake, river or sea, including various structures, devoted primarily to the practice of producing and managing food , fibres and, increasingly, fuel. It is the basic production facility in food production. Farms may be owned and operated by a single...
or as buffers and undevelopable land between these and other property types such as housing subdivisions
Subdivision (land)
Subdivision is the act of dividing land into pieces that are easier to sell or otherwise develop, usually via a plat. The former single piece as a whole is then known in the United States as a subdivision...
, industrial forests, or public properties (highways, park
Park
A park is a protected area, in its natural or semi-natural state, or planted, and set aside for human recreation and enjoyment, or for the protection of wildlife or natural habitats. It may consist of rocks, soil, water, flora and fauna and grass areas. Many parks are legally protected by...
s, watershed
Drainage basin
A drainage basin is an extent or an area of land where surface water from rain and melting snow or ice converges to a single point, usually the exit of the basin, where the waters join another waterbody, such as a river, lake, reservoir, estuary, wetland, sea, or ocean...
s, etc). Very small woodlots can occur where a subdivision has not met its development potential, or where terrain does not easily permit other uses. Very large woodlots (hundreds of acres) might emerge where profitable wood species have been depleted by commercial logging
Logging
Logging is the cutting, skidding, on-site processing, and loading of trees or logs onto trucks.In forestry, the term logging is sometimes used in a narrow sense concerning the logistics of moving wood from the stump to somewhere outside the forest, usually a sawmill or a lumber yard...
practices or compromised by diseases, leaving little choice but to divide and liquidate the real estate for other purposes.
One distinguishing characteristic of a woodlot is that the parcel size or quality of wood on the parcel does not generally justify full-scale commercial harvesting, leaving many woodlots as private investments by individuals. On the other hand, good forest management
Forest management
200px|thumb|right|[[Sustainable development|Sustainable]] forest management carried out by [[Complejo Forestal y Maderero Panguipulli|Complejo Panguipulli]] has contributed to the preservation of the forested landscape around [[Neltume]], a sawmill town in Chile...
practices, even on a small scale, may create a sustainable source of products, which can significantly contribute to the aggregate inventory available to forest-product consumers.
Woodlot economics
A woodlot of a generally non-commercial nature, may make it difficult to justify the expense of ownership, capital equipment, management and harvesting, unless some revenue can be added to the intangible benefits.Some jurisdictions encourage woodlots (over subdivisions) by providing property tax
Property tax
A property tax is an ad valorem levy on the value of property that the owner is required to pay. The tax is levied by the governing authority of the jurisdiction in which the property is located; it may be paid to a national government, a federated state or a municipality...
reductions (see, e.g., Current use
Current use
Current use is a phrase used to describe the present condition of land use and corresponding scheme for property tax incentives for qualifying land owners who wish to preserve open space and avoid having their property assessed at the "best and highest" use that could be made of it...
) or by subsidized consulting and management plans. For example, a state or provincial government may recognize the important contributions that small, non-industrial land owners make to conservation of natural resources, and provide administrative tools, information and even funding.
There may also be income tax
Income tax
An income tax is a tax levied on the income of individuals or businesses . Various income tax systems exist, with varying degrees of tax incidence. Income taxation can be progressive, proportional, or regressive. When the tax is levied on the income of companies, it is often called a corporate...
advantages for those who are able to operate their woodlot as a small business, or even as a passive investment (e.g., capital equipment depreciation, inventory depletion and operating expense deductions).
Depending on soil
Soil
Soil is a natural body consisting of layers of mineral constituents of variable thicknesses, which differ from the parent materials in their morphological, physical, chemical, and mineralogical characteristics...
s, aspect
Aspect (geography)
In physical geography, aspect generally refers to the horizontal direction to which a mountain slope faces. For example, a slope on the eastern edge of the Rockies toward the Great Plains is described as having an easterly aspect...
, parcel size and plant species and age, a properly managed woodlot might provide sufficient firewood annually for heating a number of local homes, as well as sawlogs and poles for periodic construction or repair of out-buildings. In fact, some states (including New Hampshire
New Hampshire
New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...
) grant woodlot owners an exemption from harvest "yield taxes" otherwise payable on limited quantities taken for personal use. A suitably capable and equipped woodlot owner may enjoy doing the work himself (simple forestry, road-building, selective logging, firewood processing, etc). Others might prefer sharing the costs with similarly situated neighbors to have several adjacent parcels managed simultaneously by local logger
Lumberjack
A lumberjack is a worker in the logging industry who performs the initial harvesting and transport of trees for ultimate processing into forest products. The term usually refers to a bygone era when hand tools were used in harvesting trees principally from virgin forest...
s. Otherwise, hiring professionals to reap small quantities of firewood may be too expensive to be cost-effective.
With the relatively high cost of fossil fuels for heating, a personal woodlot may be held as a biomass
Biomass
Biomass, as a renewable energy source, is biological material from living, or recently living organisms. As an energy source, biomass can either be used directly, or converted into other energy products such as biofuel....
energy "savings account". When fuel prices go up, the woodlot pays for itself by providing firewood. When fuel prices go down, the woodlot can be left to mature, or managed for improved output of other products with an eventual higher profit.
However, because of the slow nature of tree growth (for most valuable firewood trees), the profitability of many woodlots must be viewed as a long-term investment, with 20 to 50 years of management necessary before harvesting at a profit. Furthermore, in areas undergoing development, market pressures may ultimately result in poorly managed woodlots being sold and subdivided, often merely because property taxes become unbearable.
See also
- Woodland management
- PlantationPlantationA plantation is a long artificially established forest, farm or estate, where crops are grown for sale, often in distant markets rather than for local on-site consumption...
- Forest protectionForest protectionForest protection is a general term describing methods purported to preserve or improve a forest threatened or affected by abuse. The types of abuse that forest protection seeks to prevent include:* Aggressive or unsustainable farming and logging...
- Urban rural fringeUrban Rural FringeThe rural–urban fringe, also known as the outskirts or the urban hinterland, can be described as the "landscape interface between town and country", or also as the transition zone where urban and rural uses mix and often clash...
- Conservation developmentConservation developmentConservation development, also known as Conservation design, is a controlled-growth land use development that adopts the principle for allowing limited sustainable development while protecting the area’s natural environmental features in perpetuity, including preserving open space landscape and...
- Sustainable forest managementSustainable forest managementSustainable forest management is the management of forests according to the principles of sustainable development. Sustainable forest management uses very broad social, economic and environmental goals...