In 2017, professor at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), Dr. Mario Dobner Jr. had a creative idea to demonstrate the potential for pine growth in the state.

With the support of the company Florestal Gateados, he made a block of wood, measuring 1 cubic meter (0.5m x 0.5m x 4.0m) using a Pinus taeda log. In that year, the area occupied by pine in Santa Catarina was between 500 and 600 thousand hectares. According to Professor Dobner, the volume of pine that grew every second in the plantations in Santa Catarina was 1 cubic meter per second. “I built this block, with the help of students, so that people could visualize what a cubic meter of wood is, and have a perception of the enormous productive potential of the pine stands in Santa Catarina”, he explains.

Currently, the pine block is on display on the UFSC campus, in the city of Curitibanos, one of the forest centers in Santa Catarina. Mário Dobner, who is a forestry manager, explains that this is a rounded measure, to facilitate teaching. “Considering that Santa Catarina has 713,000 hectares of pine forests, we can say that, depending on the location, there are between 0.700 and 1 cubic meter of pine wood that grows per second in Santa Catarina lands”.

Santa Catarina, Paraná and Rio Grande do Sul are responsible for almost 90% of the pine wood produced in Brazil. The genus Pinus, especially the species Pinus taeda, found the best place in the world to develop in the mountains of southern Brazil. This is where it achieves the highest growth rates.