How much water is needed to produce a cubic metre of radiata pine log?

Abstract

The concept of ‘virtual water’ is the amount of water that is embedded in products and used in their production. For commercially-grown wood this is the evapotranspiration per cubic metre or per tonne of product. A Pinus radiata plantation on a paired catchment project (‘Croppers Creek’) in north-eastern Victoria, Australia, was destroyed in a major wildfire. Salvage-logging of the area provided an excellent opportunity to compute this parameter. If data from the entire research catchment was included, the result was a virtual water volume value of796 m3 of water per cubic metre of radiata pine log product. If pre-treatment data were used to correct for the presence of a retained riparian st..