Michigan has 20.17 million acres of forestland which is about 54% of total land area in the state. The private sector owns 61.47% of the forests whereas the state and the federal government own 23.08% and 15.45% respectively. Sawlogs (hardwood and softwood), pulpwood, and biomass are major forest products used by primary milling facilities in Michigan. Steel and concrete structures are used in building constructions because of their easy use, trained workforce, and established supply chain and they are responsible for emitting Green House Gases (GHG). In this study, we estimated how the market coverage of different forest products has changed from 1985 to 2018 and evaluated feedstock availability and economic impacts of producing mass timber in Michigan. Mass timber a proposed construction material to replace steel and concrete. We use ArcGIS to create ‘procurement areas’ for primary milling facilities (hardwood and softwood sawlog processors, wood biomass processors, and pulpwood processors) for 1985, 1994, 2002, and 2018. We used the road network of the US and transportation costs for the different wood products to map out procurement zone and these procurement zones were then overlapped to create competition hotspots. The availability of feedstock for different wood products was estimated using Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) data. Economic impacts were analyzed using Impact Analysis for Planning (IMPLAN). The results show that the number of primary milling facilities has decreased since 1985 except for wood biomass processors and the capacity of individual processors has increased. The market coverage of all forest products has increased. In 2018, market coverage of hardwood sawlogs contained 62.80 million MBF of merchantable hardwood, softwood sawlogs contained 34.05 million MBF, pulpwood contained 9.78 billion cubic feet, and biomass contained 8.57 million tons of merchantable biomass. We identified two potential locations in Harrison, Clare County in Lower Peninsula (LP) and Gwinn in Marquette County in Upper Peninsula (UP) to produce mass timber in Michigan. There is softwood availability to meet the current mass timber demand in the state without disturbing the existing lumber supply chain. Producing mass timber to meet the state demand results in $12.52 million as total output generating a total of 93 additional jobs. Sawmills, commercial loggings, and truck transportation are the major sectors that benefit from mass timber manufacturing in Michigan.
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