An ad hoc group of concerned stakeholders, the PJ Partnership, is gathering steam.\u00a0 The groups goal is to establish a landscape-scaled demonstration project in Northeast Nevada aimed at rangeland restoration.\u00a0 The target of this project is the incursive Pinyon Pine and Single Needle Juniper, affectionately known as PJ.\u00a0 There are literally millions of tons of the small trees\/large bushes which also bear the classification of \u201cbiomass\u201d located throughout the 40,000 square miles that constitute the Great Basin.<\/p>\n
There are many problems with the PJ.\u00a0 It\u2019s an incursive species\u2014leaving its natural ranges.\u00a0 Each tree aspires more than 50 gallons of water each day.\u00a0 It\u2019s crowding out sagebrush and affecting the Sage Grouse populations.\u00a0 And it\u2019s one hell of a fire hazard.\u00a0 It catches fire easily.\u00a0 Hundreds of thousands of acres burn, releasing carbon to the air.\u00a0 The list goes on and on.<\/p>\n
Solutions?\u00a0 Well, the Federal land managers\u2014mainly BLM and USFS\u2014are using what funds they do have to practice \u201crestoration forestry\u201d\u2014largely thinning out the trees and chipping or grinding them in place.\u00a0 There is no lumber to be had and no market for the chips.\u00a0 We hope that\u2019s soon to change.<\/p>\n
You can make stuff out of PJ biomass\u2014mulch, compost, fire bricks\u2014easily enough.\u00a0 There is the potential to haul the chips to a power-plant and co-fire the coal with some of the chips.\u00a0 There is one chip boiler in the state\u2014White Pine school district\u2014but it only uses 500 tons per year.\u00a0 Some scientists are investigating bio-char (charcoal for soil amendment) and cellulosic ethanol products.<\/p>\n
Two big questions remain\u2014Will Congress be able to provide the hundreds of millions of dollars to restore the rangelands and watershed?\u00a0 And, more importantly, will the Partnership gain the \u201csocial license\u201d to complete the tasks?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An ad hoc group of concerned stakeholders, the PJ Partnership, is gathering steam.\u00a0 The groups goal is to establish a landscape-scaled demonstration project in Northeast Nevada aimed at rangeland restoration.\u00a0 The target of this project is the incursive Pinyon Pine and Single Needle Juniper, affectionately known as PJ.\u00a0 There are literally millions of tons of … Continue reading Will the Great Basin Finally Get The Attention That It So Ecologically Deserves?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[19],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unrbep.org\/dealerportal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2436"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unrbep.org\/dealerportal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unrbep.org\/dealerportal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unrbep.org\/dealerportal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unrbep.org\/dealerportal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2436"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/unrbep.org\/dealerportal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2437,"href":"https:\/\/unrbep.org\/dealerportal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2436\/revisions\/2437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unrbep.org\/dealerportal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unrbep.org\/dealerportal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unrbep.org\/dealerportal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}