Many of the Miao families in southeastern Guizhao cook and heat with firewood. Household interviews (see Wudong and Tao Jiung) suggest that a family harvests about 75 kg of firewood a week, and twice that amount during the winter months. Taken together, this represent about 1.2 tons of wood per family. Villages with 100 families, e.g Taojiang and Wudong, may remove over 100 tons of firewood a year from local forests. This material reportedly comes from fallen or dead trees, or live broadleaf stems less than 6 cm in diameter (such as those shown in the image above). This annual creaming of small diameter broadleaf trees is undoubtedly having an impact on the floristic composition of the forest. Conifers are being planted, while the regeneration of broadleaf species is continually eliminated through firewood collection. [NOTE: Among other things, our research in Guizhou will asses the impact of firewood collection on the structure and composition of local forests.]