Pulpwood can be defined as timber that is ground and processed into a fibrous pulp. It is a versatile natural resource commonly used for paper-making but also made into low-grade wood and used for chips, energy, pellets, and engineered products.
Pulpwood can be derived from most types of trees. Categorizing trees into hardwood and softwood is the easiest way to characterize types of paper produced from pulpwood.
Paper is a thin sheet of matted cellulose fibers. Largely derived from lignocellulose, paper is created from a pulp dissolved into a slurry that is drained and dried into sheets. Different types of paper are defined by constituent fiber, paper pulp, sizing, coating, paper size, paper density and grammage.
The papermaking process developed in East Asia at least as early as 105 CE by the Han court eunuch Cai Lun, although archaeological evidence exists of 2nd century BCE paper-like material in China. Before the industrialization of paper production, the most common paper was rag paper, made from discarded natural fiber textiles collected by ragpickers. The 1843 invention of wood pulp, coupled with the Second Industrial Revolution, made pulpwood paper the dominant variety to this day.
The pulp and paper industry comprises companies that use wood, specifically pulpwood, as raw material and produce pulp, paper, paperboard, and other cellulose-based products.
Rag paper is a category of paper that is made from a pulp of discarded textiles, rope and other fibre products. Rag paper in its various forms was a widely-used paper for most of the past two millennia. Production spread along the Silk Road from its early 2nd-century origin in China to the Islamic world by the 8th century. It was introduced into Christian Europe by the 12th century, and western Europe came to dominate rag production up until the mid-19th century, when rag paper was displaced in favour of far more cost-efficient pulpwood acidic paper.
Rag paper is valued today as a specialty paper for its archival quality and tear resistance compared to wood pulp paper. Modern rag paper is often cotton paper, made from cotton linters, with a usual pH of 6.4 and degree of polymerization of 1481.2.
St. Louis County is a county in the Arrowhead Region of Minnesota. As of the 2020 census, the population was 200,231. Its county seat is Duluth. It is the largest county in Minnesota by land area, and the largest in the United States by total area east of the Mississippi River.St. Louis County is included in the Duluth, MN–Superior, WI Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Major industries include pulpwood production and tourism. Open pit mining of taconite and processing it into high grade iron ore remains an important part of the economy of the Iron Range and is directly tied to shipping in the twin ports of Duluth and Superior. Parts of the federally recognized Bois Forte and Fond du Lac Indian reservations are in the county.
A woodlot is a parcel of a woodland or forest capable of small-scale production of forest products (such as wood fuel, sap for maple syrup, sawlogs, and pulpwood) as well as recreational uses like bird watching, bushwalking, and wildflower appreciation. The term woodlot is chiefly North American; in Britain, a woodlot would be called a wood, woodland, or copse.
Many woodlots occur as part of a farm or as buffers and undevelopable land between these and other property types such as housing subdivisions, industrial forests, or public properties (highways, parks, watersheds, 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.