Writings by Andrea Watts

I am a freelance writer/editor who specializes in covering forestry and natural resources issues. What I bring to each project are undergraduate degrees in English and forestry, a master’s degree with coursework in silviculture and science communication, and on-the-ground experience managing the family tree farm.

  • 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.…

  • TimberWest September/October 2017 Being a crew of two means father-son team J.D and J.R. Boehme find themselves switching between equipment and tasks while on a job site, but that suits them just fine. In fact, a two-man team is keeping with the tradition that began nearly 40 years ago when J.D.’s father, Don, started Boehme…

  • U.S. Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station Science Findings November 2017 We ask a lot of our national forests. They are our recreation destinations, while providing habitat for numerous wildlife and plant species. They are a source of timber that supports jobs for rural communities and our cities’ water supplies. And they are vital in…

  • Construction Equipment Guide October 10, 2017 With the construction of the rail line on schedule and the field testing of the first train set for late fall 2017, the Fort Worth Transportation Authority’s (FWTA) TEXRail commuter rail project is meeting its target goal of beginning service in late 2018. And if the project forecast’s hold…

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  • Construction Equipment Guide September 26, 2017 In the west area of the Hanford Site’s Central Plateau, demolition is under way on a building that played a significant role in the United States’ weapons program history. From its production start in 1949 until its official shutdown in 1996, the Plutonium Finishing Plant (PFP) was responsible for…

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  •   TimberWest July/August 2017 Telematics technology has revolutionized business operations, and we have come to depend upon real-time global positioning systems (GPS) in our daily lives, whether to track the status of a package, receiving turn-by-turn instructions while driving, or to know when the next bus will arrive. For the logging industry, however, the full…

  • CIDERCRAFT Volume 8 In the cider world, Malus pumila — the common apple — reigns supreme, but crab apples, the North American counterpart, is finally receiving attention for its ability to make a quaffable cider too. Once traditionally used only for jellies or as pollinators, and even regarded as useless trees, crab apples are now…

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  • TimberWest May/June 2017 White and Zumstein say taking on the difficult jobs no one else wants can be challenging, but also rewarding and educational. Read more…

  • Construction Equipment Guide June 22, 2017 The new partial cloverleaf interchange at Exit 46 off I-93 in Methuen, Mass., is taking shape with the recent completion of the southbound off-ramp onto Route 110/113 and construction under way on the northbound off-ramp to westbound Route 110/113. With the four-year project now in its final year, the…

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  • U.S. Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station Science Findings April 2017 As a signatory to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the United States annually compiles a report on the nation’s carbon flux—the amount of carbon emitted into the atmosphere compared to the amount stored by terrestrial landscapes. Forests store vast amounts of…

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