We have posted the presentations from our session at the Society of American Foresters (SAF) conference last week on the Woody Biomass Utilization website here. The session was part of the Economics and Business Trends track and was titled "Connecting wildfire, forest health, biomass utilization and carbon". The aim of the session was to present the interconnectedness of a number of issues that UC Cooperative Extension works with in the forestry sector.
We started with the premise that fuels reduction does work at controlling fire behaviour in many cases so is a worthwhile activity. Then we looked at realistic options for the utlization of woody biomass material. We focussed on products and processes that are proven to work now and discussed some current projects. We then tackled the carbon issue and made the point that perhaps selling forest carbon is not the silver bullet that some in the forest sector think it is. The real carbon benefit is through substitution of wood for fossil fuels or by using wood products instead of more energy intensive alternatives.
We had an excellent audience and good discussion after the presentattions. The other sessions at the conference were very interesting. Carbon, biofuels and policy featured highly on the agenda.
Contact SAF if you are interested in purchasing the CD of conference proceedings.