The march toward China: emerging timber markets

I recently attended the 8th annual Who Will Own the Forest? conference, and I must say it was every bit as disorienting as I expected it to be.

As a forestry student, I thought that attending this conference would provide me with valuable insight into the bottom line aspects of private forestry in particular, and that this would expand my perspectives beyond the scope of forest management. And I did come away with a better understanding of those things, to some extent. On the other hand, the forestry conventions I generally attend are densely packed with directly-applicable information and lots of straight talk — so I felt a little out of my depth immersed in the world of finance.

On visual assessment

Some of you wonder what I do with all my time at school and why I am always coming home wet and/or dirty. I’ve vaguely explained that it involves plenty of data collection, but I’ve always thought a serious explanation would be tedious at best. But you’re in luck, dear readers, because today I have lots of photos.

My classmates and I were lucky enough to go on an overnight camping trip to the Gifford Pinchot National Forest for silviculture lab. Lots of things were barbecued, of course, and someone may have even carved initials into a tree (for shame!) but we also spent a considerable amount of time running up and down hills at the Wind River Experimental Forest.

Fire in Oregon’s forests: A study analysis

I had expected this to be a very dense academic work since its subtitle bills it as a synthesis of current information,  and at times, it is. But I was also surprised to see that most of the information presented would be easily understood by the average reader. It’s mildly personally disappointing, as I was hoping to find a dense academic work (since OFRI publishes things just for me dontcha know), but it’s far outweighed by how much good can be done by making this information understandable to landowners and other non-specialists.

This publication spans everything from basics to specifics, predictive science to natural history. It begins by explaining a lot of things that I take for granted, and would imagine that many Pacific Northwesterners also consider common knowledge — the recent history of wildfire suppression policy, explanations of historical fire regimes, and the many dangers posed to the natural world by the interaction of the two.

Updates and some slightly unsettling questions

What a busy few weeks! I’ve had a very strange and thought provoking experience, recently, which is mostly what I want to talk about in this post — especially if any of you can weigh in on the issue. But rather than append random updates to the end of the discussion, I’ll get them out of the way right off the top for those who are interested.

So, as far as school goes, I’ve recently begun doing watershed surveys, involving visual protocols and generating to-scale maps of a reach. It’s been fun, and more than a little wet. I want to post an update with scans once I get more done. Same goes for my silviculture class, in which a group of us are working on a restoration proposal for an area of greenspace on our campus. I’m becoming pretty comfortable with ArcGIS, too — and would heartily recommend Getting to Know ArcGIS to anyone wanting to learn this program. The book is fabulous and practical, and comes with a trial of the program suite, too — though Mac users will be out of luck.

If you only knock long enough and loud enough…

Well, I’m feeling a little discouraged today.

We’ve run into some difficulty with our SAF student chapter/campus club. The process of founding it seemed relatively straightforward (if heavy on the paperwork), but it has proven to be ridiculously difficult. Despite an awesome outpouring of support from the local and national SAF offices, we have found a disheartening lack of backing here on our own campus.

Most of the trouble stems from the Student Activities office. Like many other departments at our school, they seem terribly understaffed. Under these circumstances, it comes as no surprise that I’ve never had a call returned by them, or that it often takes weeks to get a response to an e-mail.

This wouldn’t matter to me, except that we’ve got a Bonafide Problem™!

It’s OK if you’re not good at everything: A critical analysis

library image via Wikipedia

One of the things I want to do often on this blog is write about what I’ve learned from various forestry books that I’ve read. To kick this endeavor off, I wanted to start at the beginning. So, I found the oldest book on the subject that I could: Edward T. Allen’s Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest, apparently published for the first time in 1911.

Reading it was a disjointed experience, not only due to the writing style but also in terms of the massive gap between still-relevant information and material that seems much less worthwhile. Specifically, this book is fabulous for technical information and less-than-fully relevant for social/political argumentation. It’s part of the point, as the dual aims of Allen’s text are to to explain how to manage timber for eventual public profit, and also to drum up popular and government support for sustained-use forestry; however the only “failing” is that I am reading it more than a hundred years after its intended audience.

Fun with petitions!

World Forestry Center image via Wikipedia

Well, one post and here I am feeling like we’re old friends already. In lieu of a gossipy life update, I wanted to tell you all about something I’ve been working on with friends. We’re founding a student chapter of the Society of American Foresters on our campus.

I had hoped this would be a more interesting topic, but every time I try to write about it, it ends up being about as gripping as listing the agenda items for a city council meeting. In case you don’t know, that is so boring you will weep and gnash your teeth, which I know because I used to cover them.

So far, this process has involved a lot of paperwork, plenty of e-mails, some storming of offices, and general confusion. And maybe I will come clean about how awkward I can be sometimes. Maybe that sounds more fun than it did on first description?

Just exactly what do I think I am doing?

When I was seven, I wanted to know everything.

Like, literally.

Read all the books, that type of thing.

What’s more, I thought it was actually possible to achieve this.

It may shock you to discover that I have not figured everything out. But I have not entirely abandoned my childhood goal, either. I did discover that it’s possible to learn a lot about a subject, despite realizing that you can pick as narrow a subject as you like and you’ll never reach the bottom.

So, while we may have a long way to go toward a full understanding of our world, I think there’s great value in following such a quest. When enough of us participate in lifelong journeys after ideas, we can make real contributions to the pool of human knowledge.

Maybe that is cliche, and maybe no one will read this blog; fortunately for you residents of Readertown who’ve come here, I don’t care.