Forestry and Spiritualism in Alaska
Report on the Alaska Value-Added Forest Products Workshop
Safety in the Forest: Moose-Vehicular Accidents (MVA)
Fossil Records as Indicators of Forest Vegetation Response to Climate Changes
Somatic Embryogenesis in Forestry: A Practical Approach to Cloning the Best Trees
An Interview on Forest Diseases in Alaska with Lori Trummer, Forest Pathologist
New Developments in 3-D Forest Visualization Programs
In September while attending the Society of American Foresters National Convention in Portland, Oregon, the audience was challenged to ask the "hard questions" and find solutions to them.
Addressing these hard questions during her presentation, Dr. Jo Ellen Force of the University of Idaho sought to clarify the difference between American societal environmental values and beliefs and their buying behavior patterns. Dr. Force reported that public surveys and buying statistics indicate that the United States wood products buying behaviors are not consistent with perceived public environmental values or beliefs. A following speaker indicated that, in his opinion, this difference has contributed to present conditions of undermanagement of public lands for wood products and forest health compared with over management of private lands for wood products.
The dual presentation given by Elaine Zielinski, Bureau of Land Management, and Bob Williams, U.S. Forest Service, indicated that their agencies intend to pursue more collaborative planning and participation by community groups to achieve mutually common objectives for forest management and community needs. A concern with this approach is what proportion of the national appetite for wood products will be accounted for by the sum of many smaller community based programs. Does a national priority for wood product production need to be instituted in addition to the community based programs?
Trying to understand what are the "hard questions," I decided to attend several of the presentations in the technical session titled: Forests and Religion: Perspectives, Influences, and Values. I was surprised to find that this technical session was packed with people, and this was the norm for the day-long session.
I had originally offered to give a presentation at this technical session on the importance of forests to the Ancient Hawaiians and the Kapu system. Several years ago while measuring tree diameters in a pine stand on Haleakala on Maui, I discovered a lei buried at the base of the tree. Inquiring about the significance of the lei, I was told that Native Hawaiians believed that the spirits of their ancestors resided in the trees, and the lei was placed in respect to their elders. The Kapu system allowed for the long-term subsistence on natural resources by providing enduring sustainable forests and products. This same sense of maintenance of the sustainability of natural resources has long been practiced by Native American groups throughout Alaska.
The presentations at the technical sessions of the SAF National Convention included discussions on spirituality as a forest product. At the convention, I began to wonder if the notion that spirituality or a sense of value associated with a forest or place is part of human-forest interaction and should be considered in the values attributed to forests and forest management decisions.
Perhaps, the inability to describe or quantify these values or beliefs has
lead to resistance to timber sales. It may be their real concerns regarding
spirituality were not allowed to be expressed or appreciated.
After returning from the convention, I pursued discussions on forest spiritualism and how to better address determining the range of values that might be associated with different forest types or settings. Does a forest meadow elicit a different range of "sense of place" or spiritualism than a ocean-side spruce forest, a timberline setting, or black spruce bog? What are the range of values that the public might have associated with these forest sites? It seems that we have much to learn about this aspect of human nature and perhaps much to gain by better understanding its place in forest management.
A hard question: As a nation we are a net importer of wood products. With concern for forest health, balances of trade, and global forest management, do we as a nation need to be producing more sustainable wood products from our public forest lands?
by Bob Wheeler
The Alaska Value-Added Forest Products Workshop was held on September 27-28, 1999, in Sitka. It was an opportunity to hear from both professionals and producers about the needs and opportunities for the Alaskan forest products' industry and management needs of Alaskan forests. This review was assisted by presentations from many Alaskan agencies and organizations as well as invited speakers from the Pacific Northwest.
The need for management of the boreal and coastal forests of Alaska were described. The declining conditionsattributed to increasing stress factors on the forest including insects, disease, drought, and extreme temperatureswere discussed. The management or stewardship of Alaskan federal forests was presented by Jim Caplan, deputy regional forester. Jim presented the nation's values attributed to Alaskan public forest lands as "keep it wild and pure." He suggested that this attitude may be in conflict with state and local development values. He further added that the Alaska U.S. Forest Service was addressing forest land management conflict in several ways: by the "successful" Tongass Land Management Plan revision decisions, diversifying forest products to include non-timber opportunities, collaborative stewardship efforts intended to bring community values more strongly into play, and emphasizing finished forest products for export from the state."
One of the workshop objectives was to define and identify what value-added forest products areand what the opportunities are for these products to become more important in the forest products industry in Alaska.
The report on specialty craft uses and special forest products by Catherine Mater of Mater Engineering, Corvallis, Oregon, was particularly interesting. She reported that findings in the Pacific Northwest have shown tremendous profitability exists for a variety of special forest products including traditional products such as mushrooms and berries but also from dried floral arrangements ($70 million/year) and collection of medicinal roots. An example of this is the Devils Club root which has recently been found important in medicinal use (estimates are for a multi-million dollar industry. Note: the Tongass National Forest does not currently allow permits for the collection of Devils Club roots; however, permits are allowed for the Chugach National Forest.) Catherine's report outlining these special forest products will be available in about one month.
Phil Woolwine of Columbia Consulting outlined the need and opportunities for developing a new approach to timber sales. This approach involves assisting the selling agency to adopt the customers point of view "in order to develop ways of selling standing timber that encourage increased utilization and value-added protection."
Bruce Lippke of CITRAFOR, University of Washington, gave an very interesting presentation titled "An Assessment of Market Opportunities for Alaskan Forest Products Exports." The following is an outline of his presentation.
How Competitive are Alaskan Wood Products?
What are the Implications of These Trends?
Can Alaska's Processors Become More Competitive?
Success may require progress on most of these issues not just one. What does it take to invest in secondary processing?
What are the Potential Opportunities for Alaskan Wood Products?
Tasks to Better Understand the Market and What it Takes to be Competitive:
Suggestion: We do not want to subsidize the Forest Products Industry.
However, if we are managing forest ecosystems for other values we need them to be part of the overall values. The foregone public revenue to produce ecosystem values shouldn't be significantly different than the incentives you would have to pay the private sector.
Such an incentive would not be a subsidy as it is producing comparable value. We need to account for the public values we are producing whether by incentive or foregone revenue. It is the only way to effectively use our resources.
by Bob Wheeler
Many drivers in Alaska can relate to stories of collisions or near-collisions with moose on the highway. With the winter season approaching, the high seasons for moose vehicular accidents (MVA), this is a good time to discuss this important safety issue.
Annually, it is estimated that there are about 500,000 animal collisions in the United States costing about $1 billion dollars in damage. Annually in Alaska during a typical winter, there is an average of 500 MVA.
This number can be much higher during bad winters. What are your chances of hitting a moose-vehicular accident on Alaska's highways? According to estimates made by the Department of Transportation based on number of miles driven per accident, a typical commuter driver while driving along road segments that historically have the highest incidence of MVA and adjusted for workday traffic only faces odds of about 1:1000. Accident records indicate that about 1/2 of 1 percent of MVA result in a human fatality.
The department of transportation has carefully documented stretches of Alaskan highways that are particularly prone to MVA. They identified several repeating coincidences with these accidents:
Of the nearly 1,500 moose killed over a 20 year study period, about 50 percent of them were calves, 40 percent cows, and about 10 percent were bulls. The average adult was a 2 year old.
The peak times of day for these accidents are from 5 p.m. to midnight and from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. The peak months for MVA are shown in the following graph with peaks in December and January and the lowest rates in April and May. The top four road sections within the state for MVA are all located in the Kenai-Soldotna area.
MVA will often disable a vehicle, and vehicle repairs can be very extensive
averaging from $3,000 to $10,000 depending upon the vehicle and impact. Drivers
can reduce the risk of MVA by driving defensively and being more attentive during
peak accident times and can reduce the likelihood of personal injury (based
upon reports from vehicle repair shops) by driving a larger vehicle. Some contacts
have indicated that large supplemental bumpers (non-stock item) can also reduce
the severity of the impact to the vehicle and the occupant but, this can vary
greatly depending upon the nature of the MVA.
Under State of Alaska law, a moose killed by a MVA cannot be salvaged by the driver of the vehicle. The moose is the property of the state. If you are involved in a MVA, you must contact the Alaska State Troopers who will dispatch an officer to the accident site. It is encouraged to remove the moose from the highway if it can be done safely. The Fish and Wildlife Protection unit has a local Road Kill Program designed to provide meat from the MVA to qualified charities and for potlatches. These organizations are contacted on a rotating basis to conduct the roadside salvage of the animal. Lieutenant David Warring with the Fairbanks Fish and Wildlife Protection unit indicates that much of the meat is salvageable in smaller vehicle accidents but much more of the meat is lost with large truck and train-moose impacts.
Is there anything that can be reasonably done to reduce MVA? The 1994 report prepared by the Department of Transportation and and Department of Fish & Game indicates that internationally, several alternatives have been tried as shown in the following list.
Testimonies in conversations with local drivers indicate that it can be very helpful to have an additional person in the car scanning for moose during peak accident times.
Thanks for assistance with this article is given to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, the Alaska Fish & Wildlife Protection Unit, the Alaska Department of Transportation, James King with Seekins Ford - Soldotna, and the University of Alaska.
by Bob Wheeler
Alaska has a wealth of plant and animal fossils from which conclusions can be made about the effects of climate change on vegetation. A review of the existing knowledge about forest vegetation change from fossil records was conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey and reported in 1997. Scientists have been able to recreate global temperature changes based on the levels of oxygen isotopes found in microscopic fossils found in the Pacific Ocean. Alaskan vegetation fossil records dating back 20 million years clearly show that major changes have occurred in plant communities in direct response to global climate fluctuations. These records indicate that the magnitude of the changes are especially pronounced at higher latitudes. During a major warming period from about 17 - 14.5 million years ago, a dramatic shift occurred in Alaska forest vegetation. This warming period saw the primarily coniferous forest be converted to a temperate hardwood forest with some conifers. Such shift would indicate that a warming trend of as much 30 degrees F average increase in temperature occurred during this time frame as compared to today's average temperatures. A following cooling trend about 12 million years ago equally changed the forest vegetation to a primarily conifer dominated forest. As the climate cooled and the onset of the ice ages occurred there was a continual decline in plant biodiversity as fewer and fewer plants were adapted to the cooler environment.
During the past 2.5 million years, there have been repeated cycles of warming and cooling with the associated glacial advance and interglacial decline. At the peaks of glacial advance it is estimated that as much as 50 percent of the state land area was covered by glaciers.
A warming trend developed about 130,000 years ago, and at its warmest averaged about 5 degrees F warmer than today's average temperature. During this period the spruce dominated boreal forest had spread beyond the Brooks Range and occupied much of the Bering Sea coastal area. The timberline also migrated upward as trees began growing at higher elevations in response to warming conditions.
During the past 10,000 years, in response to a general warming trend, there has been a gradual increase in the area of the boreal forest to include much of the Interior region. Early estimates of the effects of existing global warming trends, glacial retreat, and permafrost melting indicate an estimated increase in forest area of at least 1 million acres in the next century.
prepared by Alex M. Diner, Ph.D., USDA Forest Service, Southern Institute of Forest Genetics Saucier, MS
Preface: Tress as well as humans have two basic cell types based on genetic content: somatic cells and gametic or reproductive cells. Somatic cells, such as skin cells or the sapwood cells in a tree, have at least twice (2n) the base set of chromosomes. The reproductive cells (gametic cells) have a single (n) set of chromosomes.
World population growth has placed tremendous pressure on agriculture, both on agronomic and tree crops. These growing populations need to be fed, clothed and housed. For efficient plant production, large acreages that are dedicated to cultivation of single species are virtual invitations to their parasites and pests. Changing global climates, whether initiated naturally or by intervention of man, alter the agricultural potential of vast areas and entire countries.
Not only must we contrive methods for rapid, large-scale propagation of needed crops, we must also anticipate problems such as insect pest epidemics, demographic changes, and progressive droughts.
Obviously, selection of the best plants (identified by such as healthiest, fastest-growing, disease resistant, or other favorable characteristics) for scale-up is a good idea. These may scale-up by cloning and then be naturally or artificially bred among others of that species that were selected for complimentary positive features. For example, one clone that was developed for its disease resistance advantages may be cross-pollinated with another clone developed to exploit its drought-tolerance.
Methods have been developed for cloning hundreds of commercially useful plant species. In these ways, millions of individual plants can be developed rapidly in small areas on laboratory table-tops or in greenhouses. Once grown to a stage and size that will survive outplanting to the field, they may be used directly to produce a crop or may be used in breeding programs with other clones to combine the genetic advantages of each.
There are several methods that have been used successfully to clone trees. These include rooting of cuttings (stimulating roots to develop on a cutting), organogenesis (initiating many shoots from a single piece of plant tissue, then roots on the growing shoots), and embryogenesis (using a plant tissue from which to initiate many entire embryos, which have both pre-formed root and shoot embryonic structures, then maturing the embryos to fully formed baby trees). Generally, the last method is most promising over the other methods and for several reasons.
For rooting of cuttings, the source tree must be adequately juvenile to contain tissues that will respond to a rooting stimulus (generally a synthetic plant hormone). In trees this juvenility may be lost within the first few years of growth before we can identify the best individual trees in a stand from which to take cuttings. Rooting of cuttings is an unreliable process; the cuttings from a tree often do not root at all. Organogenesis and embryogenesis are tissue culture processes undertaken in the laboratory. Organogenesis is a multi-step, time-consuming, and labor-intensive process requiring the successive initiation and growth of roots and shoots from the same tissue source. Each initiation step and all plantlet growth between and after requires a different nutritional regimen. These many steps require many man-hours of labor. For these reasons, it is frequently not commercially competitive with the use of seedlings although the latter does not provide a clonal population.
Embryogenesis holds the greatest promise yet apparent to workers in the plant sciences. Here, a portion of plant tissueoften the entire young embryo (zygote) found within a seedis placed in a nutritive liquid or atop a gelled preparation of the same or similar liquid. The cells in that zygote continue to grow, producing a larger mass of cells in which most or all have undergone reverse development, back to the cell form from which they arose in the fertilized egg cell. This process of cell multiplication to a mass of many embryos is called embryogenesis. Thus, we end up with a very large number of cells that are capable of developing into an entire plant.
Because they arose from the body ['soma' = 'body' (Gr.)] of that zygotic embryo, the process of cell multiplication to a mass of many embryos is called "somatic embryogenesis." Because all organs of the plant are present from each embryo's almost-microscopic first appearance, that embryo may be developed to the whole-tree in a more direct and less costly manner.
There are several other and practical advantages to the use of somatic embryogenesis (SEM) as a means to manufacture or develop plant clones. SEM produces a virtually unlimited number of embryos as long as the culture is grown and maintained in a healthy manner in the laboratory. Any one culture may be subdivided to smaller portions and inoculated in fresh nutritive medium for continued, unlimited enlargement of the cell mass.
If one wishes to carry out experiments on the SEM, it is easy to extract a small or large portion of the culture for other studies while maintaining the original culture as it was and continuing to grow it as before. Somatic embryos may be encapsulated in a gelatinous material then dried and stored for later use as seeds. These artificial seeds could be maintained for many months to years under appropriate environmental conditions, such as cold and darkness for later sowing in appropriate sites. Pesticides may be incorporated within the encapsulating gel to suppress competing vegetation when the artificial seed is later sown.These seeds may be outplanted, maintained in storage, or returned to conditions, which once-again support embryogenesis in order to develop another population of somatic embryos. Theoretically, all these processes may be continued indefinitely.
Another and extremely promising application of somatic embryogenesis, is the potential for genetic engineering of individual cells within the SEM and then selecting and maturing the engineered cell or a cluster of cells grown from that first engineered event to fully-formed trees for outplanting in the field. We may engineer using genes for disease resistance or faster growth, drought tolerance, or resistance to harmful chemicals such as those herbicides used to suppress competing vegetation in a stand of trees. Genes are being newly identified in many plants; some of these genes show great promise for expression in commercially important crops.
Somatic embryogenesis may prove to be a widely applicable process for crop improvement in agriculture and forestry.
conducted by Bob Wheeler
Q. Could you provide a description of your job and what your primary tasks are with the USFS?
A. As forest pathologist with the US Forest Service, State and Private Forestry, I provide technical assistance related to tree diseases to state and federal agencies, Native Corporations, and private individuals in Southcentral and Interior Alaska. My primary duties include disease detection, evaluation, and assessment of disease management options.
Q. Is your work focused statewide or do you work more on a regional basis?
A. I am based in Anchorage but work on federal, state, and private land across the Southcentral and Interior regions.
Q. Could you summarize the major diseases that are of particular concern to you that occur in the Boreal Forest of Alaska?
A. There are a number of root and heart rot pathogens capable of infecting live trees in the Boreal Forest that are important both economically and ecologically. The root rot fungi are a particular concern because they are difficult to detect, can remain alive on a site for decades, and appear capable of spreading to adjacent host tissue. Pathogens of white spruce include tomentosus root rot and several heart rot fungi, such as the red ring rot fungus Phellinus pini. Stem decay and root rot are also common in paper birch and aspen stands across the region. The primary stem decay organisms of paper birch include the false tinder conk, Phellinus igniarius and the cinder conk, Inonotus obliquus; stem decay of aspen is primarily by Phellinus tremulae. Armillaria root rot appears to be widespread in hardwood stands across the region.
Q. Are there any newly introduced diseases to be concerned about in Alaskan forests?
A. None that I am aware of.
Q. You currently contribute to the Annual Forest Health Protection Report. Where or how do you get your input for this annual review of diseases in Alaska?
A. In contrast to detection surveys for insects, aerial surveys are able to detect only a limited number of diseasesprimarily the foliar pathogens. Detection surveys for heart and root rot pathogens require intensive ground surveys that are annually conducted throughout Southcentral and Interior Alaska.
Q. During the 1998 Forest Condition Conference in Fairbanks, it was noted that the incidence of disease was possibly on the rise and is more significant as a factor in forest health than previously thought. Is there evidence of an increasing rate of incidence of disease in the forest?
A. Many forest diseases are widespread across the Boreal Forest and their incidence on a site is mediated by a multitude of factors including host susceptibility and site conditions. For example, current studies of paper birch indicate that the incidence of both stem decay and root rot fungi increase substantially with stand age. Thus, as the paper birch stands in the Boreal Forest age, we can expect increases in the incidence of several important pathogens. Another example is regarding the incidence of tomentosus root rot in white spruce stands. Research indicates that root rot will readily spread from infected spruce trees to nearby spruce by root contact. Therefore, the incidence of tomentosus root rot is expected to increase in spruce trees that are currently growing on infected sites. As our ability to detect forest disease and understand subtle relationships that dictate incidence improves, we will be better able to predict trends of increasing and, in some instances, decreasing disease incidence.
Q. Is there any evidence to suggest that the level of insect mortality is directly related to the levels of disease in the forest? Does disease activity predispose the forest to catastrophic insect attack?
A. In Alaska, the role of root or heart rot diseases in predisposing trees to bark beetle attack is not well understood. Studies in the Pacific Northwest since the 1970s have revealed that, where bark beetle populations are at endemic levels (not in outbreak phase), a high proportion of trees killed by bark beetles were diseased. However, where bark beetle populations are at epidemic levels (outbreaks are in progress), the proportion of killed trees that also are diseased tends to be lower suggesting that the diseased trees act as foci from which beetle outbreaks can spread. We anticipate similar relationships in Alaska's forests.
Q. Can landowners do much to limit the occurrence of disease in birch and aspen trees in their yards?
A. The primary points of entry for disease causing fungi in paper birch and aspen include broken branches, trunk wounds, root wounds, and frost cracks. On low-vigor trees or trees that are under some form of stress, wounds tend to heal more slowly and decay develops faster. Limiting disturbance to the root system, wounding of the tree bole, broken branches, and various stress factors such as drought will help reduce incidence of stem decay and root diseases in hardwood trees.
Q. Does animal damage contribute significantly to the development of stem and heartwood disease?
A. Animal browse or rubbings on trees removes the thin protective bark and exposes wood to infection by various decay fungi. However, the infection process and decay rates are dependent on a number of factors including the biological requirements of the decay organism and wound size, location, and time of year. Studies recently conducted in Tok indicated that snowshoe hare browse that killed the leader of spruce saplings created an entrance court for heart rot fungi. The heart rot fungus apparently entered the tree through the dead leader. In contrast, hare browse on the bole of spruce trees produced substantial resin flow and did not result in decay causing organisms entering the stem wound.
Q. Does disturbing the soil in forest areas, such as building a new house foundation, contribute to increases in root diseases to other trees?
A. Check my answer to regarding disease in the yard.
Q. Can yard and woodlot management practices be conducted that will decrease the risk of disease in spruce and hardwood trees?
A. Conducting site specific walk-through surveys will help managers assess current stand condition and pathogens already present on a site. Recognizing the presence of root disease centers is a very important part of the survey because root rot fungi can remain alive on a site for decades, spreading among adjacent host trees. Depending on the management objectives for a site, actions may be taken to reduce disease incidence such as removing diseased trees or replanting/encouraging resistant tree species on a site. Minimizing trunk wounds and root wounds are also important steps to reducing the risk of disease.
Q. Is there any new research that you would like to see conducted in Alaska regarding forest diseases?
A. While we have made substantial progress on identifying the important forest diseases, we still lack basic knowledge on the distribution, ecology and epidemiology of the primary tree pathogens in the Boreal Forest. We currently have limited understanding of the relationships among the incidence of disease-causing fungi and site and stand characteristics. Studies are currently underway to evaluate age and site relationships with internal decay of paper birch across Southcentral and Interior Alaska and assess the incidence, site relationships, host density relationships, and spread/intensification rates of tomentosus root rot.
Q. If climatic warming is occurring is it likely to have any significant impact on the forest diseases in Alaska?
A. Information is lacking on the influence that climate change or subtle changes in temperature and moisture will have on forest diseases. We speculate that there may be marginal increases in the incidence of needle and leaf pathogens if warmer and moister spring weather occurs. Minor increases in decay and decomposition rates may occur proportional to increases in temperature; however, decay rate increases may be mitigated by greater productivity of the forest trees. Lastly, subtle temperature and moisture changes may allow introduction and establishment of exotic diseases that are not typically able to complete their life cycles in Alaska.
by Bob Wheeler with assistance from David Buckley and reference to "Virtual Forest Visualizing Realistic Landscapes" by J.K. Berry, D.J. Buckley, and C. Ulbricht
The past decade has seen many larger landowners and land managers use Geographic Information Systems (GIS) maps to monitor and evaluate landscape components such as stream and road systems, forest and vegetations types, land ownership patterns and have been extensively used to assist in timber harvest planning, and to assist visualizing the landscape components' spacial relationships. A drawback to the GIS input has been the difficulty of the planners and the public to visualize management plans developed for the forest areas shown on the GIS maps.
The ability to visualize realistic landscapes and the impact of alternative management activities has recently been dramatically improved to provide new opportunities for 3-D forest visualization. Programs such as the "Virtual Forest" being developed to produce complex landscape image visualization can now provide realistic vistas of forest landscapes generated by use of existing forest landscape geography and GIS resource data. The improvement of forest visualization software has been advanced in response to the increasing need in forest resource management towards more detailed designs utilizing small treatment areas scattered over a large landscape and the effects of increasing public scrutiny and stricter management guidelines requiring better and more accurate resource planning.
The visualization of forest resources is dependent upon the project scale. Generally three separate levels have been identified for visualization: the individual plot, the forest stand, or the landscape level. The stand or plot scale visualization are typically used to show harvest unit layouts or specific stand treatments (usually just a few acres in size up to 500 acres) and are typically used for engineering purpose. The landscape level visualization is used more for forest management planning and public presentations (generally for areas over 500 acres).
An example of the Plot or Stand level visualization is shown in the Stand Visualization System (SVS) developed by the U.S. Forest Service. The SVS model is linked to a forest growth simulator to allow for the projection of stand changes over time as reflected by growth, mortality and stand management (Figure 1).
The Virtual Forest produces computer generated, realistic landscapes, which include features such as 3-D terrain surface representation, sun illumination, visual exposure, atmospheric effects, polygon rendering and texture mapping, tree plantings, and tree removals. The flexibility of the program to accept alternate vegetation modifications gives planners alternative views of landscape visualization. A routine to customize 3-D renderings of trees associated with the forest area further enhances the projected images. Trees can be designed to reflect species variation, seasonal effects, stage of maturity, and objects such as stumps and snags (Figure 2).
Figure 1. A 3-dimensional stand representation produced by the SVS Program.
Figure 2. A 3-dimensional forest landscape generated by the Virtual Forest Program.
The use of these new 3-D forest visualization programs will likely be increasing in their application for forestry and natural resource planning and as educational tools. The dependence of these visualization programs upon existing GIS databasesand the huge investments that have occurred in generating reliable forest resource datamandate that the these new visualization programs be designed to use existing resource data files.
Learning About Dry Kilns and Planer Operations from Industry Leaders
Sponsored by the Industry Network Corporation and assisted by the Alaska Cooperative Extension and Sawmill Assistance Service.
Agenda
9:00 a.m. Dehumidification Dry Kilns - Larry Randall, Better Built Dry Kilns
10 :00 Hot Water Dry Kilns - Mike Newton, Koetter Dry Kilns
11 :00 Conventional Dry Kilns - Larry Randall, Better Built Dry Kilns
Noon Lunch on your own
1:00-4:00 Planer Operation and Maintenance - Mark Markham, Planer Technical Service
Fairbanks: November 16, 1999
UAF campus
Room reserved: Memorial Conf. Room at the Wood Center
Time of reservation: 8 a.m. -5 p.m.
Palmer: November 17, 1999
Mat-Su College campus
Room reserved: FSM 103-Fred & Sara Machetanz Bldg.
Time of reservation: 8 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Ketchikan: November 19, 1999
UAS Ketchikan campus
Room reserved: Forum A - Paul Building, 2600 7th Ave.
Time of reservation: 8 a.m. - 5 p.m.
If you have any questions concerning this workshop, please contact Ken Kilborn, Sawmill Assistance Service, P.O. Box 241605, Anchorage, AK 99524-1605 ph. (907) 276-2790; fax (907) 276-2789; e-mail: kkilborn@alaska.net
Lumber Drying/Kiln Operator's Workshop
A Lumber Drying/Kiln Operator's Workshop is being planned in conjunction with the delivery and installation of the new demonstration dry kiln in Sitka. The workshop is now scheduled for the week of December 6, 1999. If you desire further information on the workshop, contact Dan Parrent, Juneau Economic Development Council, Wood Products Development Service, Sitka ph: (907) 747-5688
Carbon Sequestration/Reforestation Needs and Opportunities in Alaska
The Alaska Reforestation Council is planning the workshop Carbon Sequestration and Reforestation Needs and Opportunities in Alaska. The workshop is scheduled for December 14, 1999 in Anchorage. The site for the workshop has not yet been announced.
Topics for the meeting:
For further information contact John Alden ph: (907) 474-7652; or Chris Maisch, State Division of Forestry, Fairbanks, AK ph: (907) 452-8251
