Spotted: Recent research into the productivity of mature trees as carbon sinks found that the average age of peak net primary productivity ranged from 35 to 75 years. As a result, the many millions of trees being planted as part of reforestation efforts are not going to be fully effective at helping to mitigate climate change for several decades. Reforestation should therefore not be seen as a panacea for climate change, especially if it normalises people to the destruction of forests on the mistaken belief that we can ‘bring them back’ at will.
This is the argument of Green Sanctuaries, which is focusing its attention on preserving the forests that are still intact. The French organisation connects financial supporters with forests and communities needing support. It oversees projects around the world, including forest ecosystems in Ecuador, Zimbabwe, and Namibia that are especially important to the world’s biodiversity. Companies can get involved by donating money, time, and equipment. Individuals can contribute financially via a one-off or regular monthly donation.
The Green Sanctuaries team includes a global network of ‘forest watchers’ – biodiversity experts who identify the most precious plots of forested land in private hands. Once a parcel of land is confirmed as at risk, Green Sanctuaries tries to buy or long-term lease as much of it as possible. Once ownership has been transferred, the organisation works closely with local communities to design and implement long-term management strategies that include water access, creation of conservation jobs, and the opening up of the forest to research projects. In some areas, the Green Sanctuaries team also helps local and Indigenous communities protect the land from neighbouring pollutants, such as runoff from industrial farms.
The world’s forests are such rich spaces for biodiversity that in just one of Green Sanctuaries’ projects, a 3,500-hectare habitat, protects more than 100,000 species of insects, around 200 species of amphibians and reptiles, and 550 species of birds, while providing critical habitat space for the endangered tapir.
From creating a database of the world’s forests to using forest products as new food sources, innovations in Springwise’s library highlight the diversity of the projects working to save some of the world’s most important carbon sinks.
Spotted: In the last 10,000 years, the world has lost one-third of its tree cover, with the last 100 years seeing as much deforestation as the previous 9,000. As well as depleting essential carbon sinks, this tree-felling has also proven detrimental to the Earth’s natural biodiversity. New ways of mapping and interacting with our forests are necessary to keep track of, and hopefully begin to reverse, this environmental disaster.
This is where ArborMeta comes in – using a proprietary combination of LiDAR, algorithmic analysis, and software to analyse our world’s forests in unprecedented detail.
With this technology, the company can view the above-ground biomass of an area and in turn, quantify the sequestered carbon that is stored there – our forests being the largest store of living carbon in the world. LiDAR (light detecting and ranging) is a technology that relies on lasers to measure distances and then create high-resolution models of the area it has been used on, in this case, a forest.
The idea is relatively simple. The LiDAR sends out a laser and measures the amount of time it takes to return and then works out the distance through this time versus the speed of light. This process, carried out with many thousands of beams of light and over many different positions in a forest, produces a 3D map that is unmatched in its accuracy.
ArborMeta’s three-step process of terrestrial LiDAR collection, aerial and satellite data calibration, and then machine learning generation allows for essential environmental data to be collected and understood more easily and efficiently.
MRV (monitoring, reporting, and verification) is a process by which the success of environmental projects is recorded and ArborMeta’s technology helps to reduce the labour and cost of this without compromising accuracy – whether that’s for carbon stock assessments or tracking conservation efforts.
Our forests are precious, so it’s no surprise that innovators are developing creative ways to protect them. Springwise has also spotted these microforests that are returning degraded land to productivity as well as this new approach of valuing forests as ESG assets.
We should be aiming for the future depicted in the Timber Revolution logo with a combination of mid- and high-rise mass-timber buildings interspersed with trees, argues ACAN co-founder Joe Giddings in this interview.
“My vision is in some ways aligned to that illustration,” Giddings said of the artwork produced for the series by Yo Hosoyamada (top).
“I really think we should be building our cities densely and avoiding urban sprawl, and if we follow that to its logical conclusion you need buildings at scale.”
Joe Giddings is UK networks lead at Built by Nature and a co-founder of ACAN. Photo by Melchior Overdevest
Giddings is a co-founder of the Architects Climate Action Network (ACAN) pressure group and UK networks lead at Built By Nature, an organisation dedicated to accelerating timber construction across Europe.
“So many architects really want to use mass timber but never get very far because it’s tricky,” he told Dezeen.
“That is sort of our mission.”
“We really need to be not building as much as we can”
Because of their structural properties, Giddings believes that mass-timber products like cross-laminated timber, glued laminated timber and laminated veneer lumber are best-placed to decarbonise the built environment, and not timber frame as some experts suggest.
Timber frame uses less wood than mass timber but is only suitable for use at up to three storeys he stated. Meanwhile, more resource-intensive engineered-wood products are strong enough to support much taller structures so can help increase urban density.
“It’s really only that family of products that are suitable for the buildings that we should be building,” said Giddings. “I really think we need to be looking at laminated veneer lumber
Giddings also argues that mass timber goes hand-in-hand with reducing demolition of existing buildings as a means of limiting the vast greenhouse gas emissions associated with construction.
“When you imagine a future where we aren’t demolishing anything, timber comes into its own because it’s lightweight and you can add storeys to existing buildings,” he said.
“We really need to be not building as much as we can, and if we are building we need to make sure it’s out of biobased materials. That is the only way the built environment is going to help combat the climate crisis.”
One major current barrier to greater uptake of mass timber in architecture is the limited supply chain, with engineered wood still only accounting for a small proportion of the structural timber products produced worldwide.
However, Giddings contends that increasing demand for mass timber has the potential to mark a fundamental shift in our landscapes, back to one centred around trees.
“If you build up the supply chain enough and demonstrate demand it creates a commercial incentive to plant forests,” he added. “Forests could be at the heart of our society again.”
A 100-metre-tall timber tower designed by Schmidt Hammer Lassen is set to be built in Switzerland. Image courtesy of Schmidt Hammer Lassen
Another hot topic related to mass timber is the ongoing race to build taller and taller buildings out of wood, with the five tallest timber buildings in the world all completed in the past four years and a 100-metre-tall wooden skyscraper set to be built in Switzerland.
Some experts have been critical of this trend, arguing it does not make best use of the material. But despite his view that mid-rise buildings should be the focus, Giddings sees some value in timber skyscrapers.
“It’s fantastic to see really tall buildings being built from timber,” he said. “It advertises the idea that it’s possible.”
“Of course we really need to be building mid-rise office and apartment buildings but the tall wooden buildings tell people that it is possible, and the reaction is ‘wow, I didn’t know we could do that with timber’.”
“We should always come back to embodied carbon”
Nevertheless, he is firm that simply using timber as part of a building’s structural makeup is not enough, and that the focus should always be on cutting embodied carbon.
“We should always come back to this embodied carbon issue and look at each case on its merit,” he said.
“We shouldn’t be promoting buildings that are quite bad in terms of embodied carbon just because they have a bit of timber in them.”
He points to Google’s gigantic new London headquarters, designed by BIG and Heatherwick Studio and currently under construction. The 330-metre-long building will be partly made out of timber but still use large quantities of concrete and steel.
“Yes they have managed to use timber, but a lot of it is just standard construction,” said Giddings. “I don’t know if we should be celebrating unless they achieve a low embodied-carbon figure.”
Completed last year, this project saw 93 per cent of the existing 1930s concrete building kept and extended upwards and outwards with a timber and glass structure to form a new office space.
“We should be celebrating projects that use timber to infill and extend,” said Giddings.
Giddings cites The Gramophone Works in London as “a model for how we should be building”. Photo by Dirk Lindner
For mass timber to become more widely used, Giddings believes that governments need to champion research into its use and the major technical challenges – moisture ingress and fire safety – which are currently the basis of insurance and regulatory hurdles.
In addition, he emphasises the importance of more architects learning how to use timber appropriately.
Fire in particular, he says, is a “nuanced and complex issue” that should be subject to a frank discussion.
“At the moment we can’t ask any old architect to design a timber building because the knowledge is not there,” he said. “A lot of the know-how exists in a small number of forums.”
“We are faced with a really complex challenge: we need to switch really quickly to mass timber but we also need a rapid uptake in knowledge to enable this transition, which isn’t happening fast enough at the moment.”
This article is part of Dezeen’s Timber Revolution series, which explores the potential of mass timber and asks whether going back to wood as our primary construction material can lead the world to a more sustainable future.
Spotted: If forests are managed sustainably, they can be an invaluable asset in the fight against climate change. Earlier this year the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) published a report outlining how wood-based innovations and sustainable forest use can help to tackle the climate crisis and achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Timbeter, an Estonian startup, is on a mission to make forestry sustainable ‘one log at a time’. By doing so, it is helping to ensure that forests deliver the potential outlined in the report.
The startup specialises in timber measurement and data management, using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technologies to provide greater accuracy in its services. The technology makes it possible to quickly measure log diameters, log count, and log pile density through a smartphone, providing a valuable resource for companies who need to have greater oversight of their forestry data. It could also be used by forestry professionals to track the health of trees and prevent illegal logging.
In a recent study conducted by Poznan University, Timbeter was found to be 95 per cent accurate in its timber measurements. This high level of accuracy is made possible by machine learning technologies that allow Timbeter to constantly refine and improve its algorithms.
Earlier this month, the startup announced that it has raised €500,000 in funding. The round was led by Future Investment Initiative (FII) Institute, a non-profit organisation run by Saudi Arabia’s main sovereign wealth fund. The company plans to use the funding to continue developing its technology and expanding its team. In addition, Timbeter hopes to raise awareness of the importance of forests and the need to protect them.
Other sustainable forestry innovations, spotted by Springwise, include a network of intelligent sensors helping emergency response teams respond to climate change impacts, and digital ‘smart forest’ technology that helps with forest management and research.
