Yield marginal land

The creation of a long-term and consistent demand for non-merchantable wood waste could result in dramatically higher yield for land parcels therefore many areas which previously had marginal harvesting potential could become financially viable. 

Since the downwarping of the continental margin did not require uplift inland of the Fall Line, erosion rates on much of the land surface supplying sediment to the continental margin must have remained relatively low. Menard (1961) estimated that 7.8 x 10 km of rock must have been removed from the Appalachians over 125 Myr to account for the sediment now on the continental terrace and rise and on the abyssal plains off the east coast of North America. The mean sediment yield required to produce this material is —0.2 kg/(m yr). (For comparison, this is about the same as the sediment yield of the Missouri River drainage basin today.) Matthews (1975) has used the more extensive data on sediment thicknesses off the Atlantic Coast now available to estimate that the sediment yield of eastern North America over the past 60 Myr was 0.012 kg/(m yr) for the northern half of the coast and 0.067 for the southern half. These sediment yields can be attained with a land surface relief of a few hundred meters under temperate climate conditions and so are consistent with the hypothesis that both the elevation and relief of most of the land surface have remained moderate since the opening of the Atlantic Ocean. 

Eigure 24.7 [1] shows our results, using 2011 cost figures. The calculations assume full capacity utilization and a 95-98% yield labor, energy and environmental costs are included, based on production in United States depreciation on equipment, land and buildings is taken into consideration R D, other SG A costs and profit margins are excluded. 

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