Category: Sustainable Forestry
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Throughout the summer of 2014, anyone watching the Piper-Cherokee, single-engine, piston-powered airplane fly repeated passes over interior Alaska’s Tanana Valley might have thought the airplane was like the other small planes that fly Alaska’s skies. This was not a typical Piper-Cherokee though; it carried a state-of-the-art multisensory airborne imaging remote-sensing system that can measure the…
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In fire-dependent forests of the western United States, tree species adapt in several ways to survive fire. In low-elevation forests that evolved with frequent, low-severity fire, many species have thick bark protecting the living tissues of cambium and phloem from wildfires’ destructive heat. Longer, thicker needles or those enclosed in thick scales protect growing buds.…
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U.S. Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station Science Findings December 2018 Pacific Northwest forests play a significant role in the global carbon cycle. Because they sequester atmospheric carbon, they are considered long-term carbon sinks when one is calculating the carbon budget for the region. Yet a forested landscape is more than trees; numerous headwater streams…
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TimberWest Sept/October 2018 Step onto a Holbrook operation and you’ll see Jim “Big Jim” Filmore who started with the company as a chaser and is the go-to guy on tough logging sites. Then there’s Jon Gordon who began working in the log yards but is now operating log shovels, and Dale “Big Dale”…
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TimberWest May/June 2018 Although Ken Wilson, owner of Ken’s Kutting, is approaching a significant milestone in his logging career — next year will mark 45 years spent out in the woods — he isn’t slowing down. Instead, he is prioritizing what’s important in life. You won’t find Ken or Danny Wilson, his cousin…
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U.S. Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station Science Findings June 2018 If all the fungi within a half gram of forest soil were lined up, they would form a line that’s half a mile long. That same half gram of soil includes bacteria that number in the hundreds of thousands. These fungi and…
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TimberWest March/April 2018 Three times a day, a residual hauler from Sierra Pacific, Interstate Wood Products, or Veneer Chip Transport visits Gem Shavings’ new Shelton facility to deliver an average of 175 cubic yards of wood shavings. Usually a couple days later, these wood shavings leave Gem Shavings either as bales or in bulk,…
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TimberWest January/February 2018 When fifth-generation logger Stephen Reidhead was inspired by his wife Trish to start Tri-Star Logging in 1986, he couldn’t have foreseen that industry changes in the 1990s would force him to exchange logging in the hills surrounding the city of Snowflake for grinding up the citrus orchards to make way for Phoenix…
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TimberWest November/December 2017 With over 40 years of working in the Mossy Rock-Winlock area of Southwest Washington, there aren’t many hills that the Lyons family hasn’t logged. “We’ve been pretty fortunate to [have] spent 30 years in this area,” says Brad, while driving out to the first of several jobsites where his crews are working.…
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Construction Equipment Guide December 6, 2017 On a sunny summer day at Oregon State University, before an audience of researchers and representatives from the construction industry, a Knife River-owned ready-mix cement truck poured a batch of concrete. By all appearances the concrete looked similar to concrete poured at a construction site with one notable exception.…
Writings by Andrea Watts 