MSU research explores new use for northern Michigan’s storm-damaged timber
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EmailUSDA-funded project aims to turn excess timber into biochar, creating new economic and environmental opportunities.
EAST LANSING, Mich. — A Michigan State University (MSU) researcher has been awarded a $300,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA NIFA) to explore a new use for timber damaged by recent ice storms in northern Michigan.
Emily Silver, an associate professor and associate chairperson in the MSU Department of Forestry, will study how damaged timber and other wood unsuitable for traditional forest products could instead be turned into and sold as biochar.
In March 2025, severe ice storms swept through parts of northern Michigan and the Upper Midwest, prompting state-issued emergency declarations in 10 Michigan counties (USDA would later declare 13 counties as natural disaster areas). From March 28-30, freezing rain brought down power lines, closed roads and left many residents sheltering in place.
It also caused unprecedented damage to Michigan forests. Countless trees across these counties snapped due to the weight of ice frozen on their branches, leaving behind a historic cleanup effort.
While some of the damaged timber has been salvaged for traditional forest products, Silver said the sheer volume of wood has exceeded what existing markets can absorb.
“There’s just a ton of wood out there,” Silver said. “Hats off to the forest product sector for doing their absolute best to get this material out of the woods and used in some form or fashion, but they hit a point where they became saturated. They made all the two-by-fours they could and wondered, ‘What else do we do?’”
The surplus led Silver to consider another potential use for the wood: biochar.
Biochar is a char product that USDA defines as “black carbon produced from biomass sources,” such as wood chips, plant residues and other agricultural and forest waste products.
It’s created through pyrolysis, a process that heats wood and other organic material at high temperatures with little or no oxygen. The process locks much of the carbon from that material into the resulting biochar rather than releasing it into the atmosphere.
Silver, who serves as the natural resources and social science advisor with the MSU Landscape Intelligence Network and runs the Great Lakes Biochar Network, believes local, state and regional biochar markets could provide an outlet for timber damaged by the storms. Converting that wood into biochar could generate revenue for landowners, improve soil health for farmers and increase environmental resilience to drought and flooding.
While biochar itself isn’t a new concept — rich soils in the Amazon basin are believed to have been fertilized with biochar thousands of years ago by Indigenous communities — markets for it in the U.S. are still developing. Silver said key goals of the project are to identify barriers limiting those markets and find ways to overcome them.
“We pitched this project with objectives that are twofold,” Silver said. “One is to figure out what the challenges and barriers are to use the material. We want to get it to a place where it can be processed and pyrolyzed into biochar — that’s step one. Step two is then what do we do with it? We’ve made the char. Now, who are we selling and giving it to? This grant will fund the production of content about how to make biochar and what different types of biochar are like, as well as issues involving what the end uses of it are, what the possible markets for it are, and where it can be sent.”
Through workshops, demonstrations, logger trainings, economic impact assessments and biochar testing, the project will provide information and resources to support biochar production and use. Tom Stanton and MC Rothhorn said this type of education and outreach will be critical to developing biochar markets in Michigan.
Stanton is an independent clean energy policy consultant and founder of Community Energy Solutions, and Rothhorn is the co-owner of Eastside Compost in Lansing.
Rothhorn said biochar can play an important role in Michigan’s circular bioeconomy, where renewable biological resources are reused to produce food, energy and other goods. He’d like to incorporate biochar into his composting business, but said current regulations and limited consumer demand have made that difficult. He said he hopes this project can help create new opportunities for biochar production and use in Michigan.
“We’re looking to manage the land naturally with the feedstock we get from it, turning those inputs into something that might actually improve soil health for the city,” Rothhorn said. “We put our finished compost in gardens and parks. We have local customers who want to buy it, and we believe our product will improve with the addition of biochar into the recipe.
“We’re part of a circular bioeconomy in Lansing that includes a lot of gardens, farms and neighborhoods. We consider ourselves part of an agrihood, an agricultural neighborhood, and I think biochar is a way to experiment further with the material we have in the area.”
Stanton said in addition to the nutrients that biochar can restore within the soil and the benefits it can bring to agriculture, monetizing it as a carbon credit or other type of emission-reduction unit can help drive adoption of the product while reducing greenhouse gas emissions and generating revenue for its producers and users. This research, he said, will be instrumental in demonstrating how that approach can work in practice.
“I think more and more farmers, gardeners and food producers are going to recognize the potential behind making these changes to help make money and grow wealth in our local communities,” Stanton said. “Dr. Silver and her team will play an essential role in helping advance and disseminate that information."
This project builds on research and outreach led by the Great Lakes Biochar Network, a hub for biochar information and resources across the Great Lakes region hosted by MSU Extension. The network is supported by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources Forest Resources Division and Project GREEEN, a signature research program administered by MSU AgBioResearch.
Michigan State University AgBioResearch scientists discover dynamic solutions for food systems and the environment. More than 300 MSU faculty conduct leading-edge research on a variety of topics, from health and agriculture to natural resources. Originally formed in 1888 as the Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station, MSU AgBioResearch oversees numerous on-campus research facilities, as well as 15 outlying centers throughout Michigan. To learn more, visit agbioresearch.msu.edu.
