Forest Product Industry and Engineered Wood Products: The Nigerian Experience

The forest product industry in Nigeria is barely surviving rather than thriving. Faced with a lot of challenges, the industry has witnessed the closure of many wood processing industries while a few are operating at low capacity. This paper examines engineered wood products and the outlook on wood and wood products in Nigeria. It discusses some of the challenges that have inhibited the growth of the industry and provides recommendations for reinventing the industry through development of modern value-added wood products for sustainable building construction. Keywords: Collaboration; Engineered wood products; Forestry product industry; Glulam; Sustainability.

Ownership Changes and Harvesting Patterns Associated with the Forest Products Industry in West-Central Alabama from 1984 to 2014

Since the beginning of the 1980s, vertically integrated forest products companies have divested their forestland with much of the new ownership being real estate investment trusts (REITs) and timberland investment management organizations (TIMOs). These new landowners and their associated behavior of intensive timber management and higher and better use conversion has given rise to issues such as land-use change, fragmentation, and conservation. To better gauge harvesting patterns and ownership changes associated with the divestment of forestland by forest industry and the arrival of TIMOs and REITs on the forested landscape, eleven Landsat scenes were used to detect harvest activity within the Alabama counties of Bibb, Hale, Pickens, and Tuscaloosa from 1984 to 2014. Detected harvesting activity was paired with county parcel data and then classified based on landowner type: REITs, TIMOs, forest product industry, government, and non-industrial private forest (NIPF) landowners. Overall harvest trends showed a decrease in harvest rates from 1984 to 2005 with a slight increase in harvest rates after 2005. Per scene interval, acres harvested were highly variable for NIPF and relatively stable for forest industry during this time. Government ownership maintained relatively low and stable harvesting behavior throughout the study period. Acres harvested by REITs was relatively low. TIMOs showed an ever increasing rate of harvest within the study area until the last scene interval (2011-2014).