The July-September 2015 issue of California Agriculture, the quarterly peer-reviewed journal of the University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources has just been published. The current Special Issue titled "Woody Biomass: Energy, ecosystems, economics" focuses on the nexus of forest management, climate change, and renewable energy through the lense
of forest biomass utilization in California. Drs. John Shelly and Peter Tittmann of UC Berkeley Woody Biomass Utilization Group served as Guest Editors for this issue.
You'll find articles on a range of topics including:
- ecological impacts of fire hazard reduction activities in California Forests
- improved air quality outcomes from biomass energy production compared with alternative biomass fates
- economics of biomass utilization in energy applications including liquid fuels
- innovative approaches to wood chip transport that can reduce costs
- editorials from:
- Ashley Conrad-Saydah, California Environmental Protection Agency Deputy Secretary for Climate Change and Energy
- Dr. Peter Tittmann, Academic Coordinator for the Woody Biomass Utilization Group at UC Berkeley.
Thanks to all of the authors for their commitment to producing excellent work for this issue and all of the reviewers for their tireless diligence. We sincerely hope this issue will help provide a sound scientific basis to inform ongoing discussions in California and nationally around the role of forests and forest management in meeting renewable energy, and climate policy goals. This special issue helps underscore the importance of increasing utilization of biomass residuals from sustainable forest management and a broader recognition of the important role of wood products and biomass from active forest management into an uncertain future.
It has been a great pleasure to work with the editorial staff of the journal, in particular Jim Downing, Deborah Thompson and Will Suckow have been excellent.
The UC Berkeley biomass utilization group also thanks the US Forest Service Region 5 State and Private Forestry for their continued support of our program and partial funding of this publication effort.