- Author: Nic Dutch
Today, the revitalization of the UC Wood Products laboratory at the Richmond Field Station outpost is led by Berkeley's UCCE Assistant Professors and Extension Specialists Dr. Daniel Sanchez and Dr. Paul Mayencourt.
Sanchez leads the Carbon Removal Lab and his work advocates for the adoption of innovative biomass utilization technologies, which encourages policymakers and industry leaders to learn, collaborate and support utilization of woody biomass and wood products. Mayencourt researches the utilization of underutilized small-diameter trees, and Californian native hardwoods, for structural applications in architecture and engineering.
The work and research that both Sanchez and Mayencourt are conducting is inspiring. The UCCE Forest Stewardship Team hosted a field day at Richmond to connect private forest landowners and natural resource professionals to the research at the Richmond Field Station. Participants learned about investing in portable sawmills, utilization of solar kilns, and explored potential uses of their own lumber for DIY creations.
Forest landowners and tour attendees Nora Jesh and Billy Batty recognize that managing excess woody material post-wildfire is one of their biggest challenges and is what inspired their participation in the Richmond Field Station tour. “We are constantly looking for ways to use our timber while reducing our property's fuel load,” said Jesh.
Tour Stop #1: Portable Sawmills
At the first stop in the tour, Mayencourt and Sanchez discussed the considerations of investing and operating a portable sawmill. The conversation highlighted the application of milling non-commercially valued timber, such as small diameter trees, for personal utilization and active forest management. Decreasing tree density, particularly small diameter trees, provides more growing space and reduces competition for larger trees to mature, therefore improving their resiliency in the face of disturbances. They demonstrated the use of the station's “Wood-Mizer” sawmill while milling an often underutilized native California hardwood, the tanoak.
Landowners considering investing in a portable sawmill are encouraged to think of how much material they intend to mill, and the feasibility of further wood processing. Also, there may be portable sawmill operation locally or an opportunity to invest in one as a community, depending on demand.
When asked how wood utilization can improve at the landowner and community scale, Batty and Jesh responded:
“Due to the high cost of logging and transportation to the big commercial mills, it's not really profitable for private landholders to have their timber harvested. But I could see some strong advantages to creating a local co-op type arrangement to buy a portable mill that could be brought to different sites. It just makes sense to do at least the first few levels of processing close to where the trees are. Transportation costs would be greatly reduced, and production could be tailored for local needs. And of course, it would generate profits for the local community. I've heard that there's a mill in the Midwest that pays big bucks for beetle damaged California pine, but why should we be shipping it halfway across the country only to be shipped back as the end product, leaving the profits behind?”
For more information on the broader economy of California's Forestry and Forest-Products Sector, please view our UCANR publication.
Tour Stop #2: Solar Kilns
Next, Mayencourt and Sanchez led the tour to a crucial step in wood processing – wood drying. Before cut wood can be utilized as manufacturing lumber, it must be dried to a specific moisture content. Since California's ambient humidity fluctuates too often for wood to be air-dried, a kiln is essential for lumber processing.
At the field station, Mayencourt constructed a greenhouse solar-kiln that extracts energy from the sun and exerts it to dry lumber. The simple plywood frame construction and south-facing plastic sheet rooftop with fans for air circulation is an approachable means for landowners to take a dive into processing their own lumber.
To explore more, view Virginia Tech's guide for solar kiln constriction.
Tour Stop #3: Wood Product Utilization – Mass timber and DIY
The tour concluded at the station's design and construction building, where Mayencourt and Sanchez research cost-effective and innovative uses of California's lumber, such as mass timber. Mass timber refers to an engineered-wood product, consisting of layers of wood fixed together via mechanical or adhesive joiners. By linking one layer of wood to another, the strength increases and allows it to be used for larger structural components in buildings.
There are different forms of mass timber fastening that do not require adhesives, such as nail-laminated (NLT) and dowel-laminated (DLT). Mayencourt and Sanchez noted that investments in mass timber act as a carbon-smart solution for California's building sector, provides economic value to resilient forest management projects, and reinvigorates the forest product industry in both urban and rural communities.
The most recent Joint Institute for Wood Product Innovations report identified actions and policies that support wood products innovation. Movement on this front can be seen as CAL FIRE invests $15 million in new Wood Products and Bioenergy Program. Sanchez hopes that further funding in innovative research in wood products, as well as state incentives and collaboration with private industry, will lead California into a new era of climate-smart forestry.
As for Jesh and Batty, their ambitions for DIY projects for the resort range from the practical to the fantastical:
“We are both huge Tolkien fans and have been since we were kids. We would love to carve the White Tree or the Gates of Moria into double doors for the lodge. Then use LEDs or glow in the dark resin to make them come alive at night. More realistic goals will be to make tables, chairs, and other smaller items for our rental cabins as we get them restored. We love the idea of furnishing the cabins with wood from the property instead of bringing in outside goods.”
Private forest landowners manage more than 40% of California's forests, and they play a critical role in the states' initiative to expand wood product utilization. Investing in avenues for private landowners to participate in the wood product and bioenergy sector would not only spur economic development in local communities, but also provide environmental benefits via forest health improvements.
- Author: Kara Manke
Surrogates to wildfire
Trial by fire
- Author: Grace Dean
As California grapples with decades of severe wildfires, the newly established UC ANR Fire Network plays an integral role in providing and advancing science-based solutions and delivering useful tools throughout the state. Recently, the Fire Network hosted an immersive field tour for California legislative staff in collaboration with Berkeley Forests to demonstrate their work in ongoing fire and forestry research.
“We have such a rich network of fire experts and thought leaders within UC ANR,” notes Lenya Quinn-Davidson, Fire Network Director. “It was great to have everyone in one place, thinking about how we can best inspire and empower positive change through our research, education and outreach, policy, and training.”
Held on November 17th at Blodgett Forest Research Station, UC ANR staff and academics shared their research and experiences with a diverse group of legislative staff. The tour provided an opportunity for scientists and policymakers to connect over shared goals of addressing California's growing wildfire and forestry management challenges.
Sitting on 4,000 acres of Sierra forestland, Blodgett Forest Research Station is the flagship site for research within the Berkeley Forests network. The in-person visit gave attendees the opportunity to learn about the different forest management approaches practiced at Blodgett, and understand the importance of maintaining research forests across the state. “We need research facilities like Blodgett,” expressed Forestry Advisor Yana Valachovic to the tour group. “It's a way to ask these questions [about forest management],” she continued. The research questions answered through experiments at Blodgett have implications that reach beyond the station's boundary, which was demonstrated to tour guests over three tour stops.
UC ANR Specialist and Berkeley Forests Co-Director Rob York led the four-hour tour, where visitors could view different forest management treatments and heavy equipment used for treatment, and learn firsthand about UC-led collaborative research projects.
Can you run through it? Can you see through it?
Tour guests joined York at the first stop, a stand (group of trees of similar age and size) which has not seen treatment by humans for over 60 years. This first stop was a glimpse at what an unmanaged forest looks like through a forester or a wildfire scientist's eyes. Small trees, less than a few feet tall, clustered under a dense overstory, can facilitate a wildfire's quick movement from forest floor to tree canopy. Close clusters of trees make it much easier for fires to burn across a stand, and the spongy layer of duff underneath the guests' feet burns hot when conditions are dry. These stand conditions, coupled with an abundance of downed woody material, can lead to intense fire behavior when conditions are hot and dry.
Leading California wildfire scientist and UC Berkeley Professor Scott Stephens shared his stance, stating that “Taking stands that look like this into the future with climate change…is nothing less than a trainwreck.” He and York emphasized that a forest's odds of persisting through wildfires are greatly increased when fuel loads are reduced and forests are thinned. York introduced his barometer for a healthy forest density, positing that guests ask themselves: “Can I run through it? Can I see through it?” the next time they visit a forest.
This is not to say that all fire is bad for a forest. Fire is a part of a healthy forest ecosystem and has been for thousands of years- thanks to natural ignitions from lightning and Indigenous stewardship and cultural practices.
The second stop on the tour was a stand where the overstory (canopy) had been thinned, but the surface fuels were not treated with prescribed fire. York explained to the group that solely thinning a forest was not the answer, and that the best treatment would merge prescribed fire and overstory thinning treatments. In fact, a primary facet of the Fire Network's goals has been to increase the number and strength of community-based Prescribed Burn Associations (PBAs). 24 PBAs have formed throughout California since 2017, and they greatly increase community capacity for prescribed fire in both forested and non-forested ecosystems.
Eating broccoli before dessert?
The tour ended at a stand that had seen both thinning and prescribed fire treatments, and is part of an experiment comparing fire emissions to wildfire emissions. Another fuels management experiment happening at Blodgett is the use of livestock grazing as a tool to manage live fuel loads. This project is a collaborative effort between Livestock Advisor Dan Macon, Fire Network Coordinator Katie Low, and other ANR Advisors and Specialists. The effort exemplifies the way wildfire demands attention and innovation from outside the fire and forestry fields.
Macon and Low are examining the efficacy of goat grazing and its implications on animal health at Blodgett. This entails seeing how they can encourage goats to graze unfamiliar vegetation. Likening it to human behavior, Low asked the group, “If it was late at night, and you're craving a snack, which would you eat first: a bowl of steamed broccoli? Or your favorite dessert?” The goats that Macon and Low monitor clearly fill up on their ‘dessert' first and need extra encouragement to graze the woody vegetation, leading to more intervention on the herder's part. Through offering glimpses into their research, Macon, Low, and York demonstrated to the group the many approaches researchers are taking to help increase the state's wildfire resilience.
By sitting at a critical point of both research and application, UC ANR staff were able to give visitors their unique perspective on the topics of climate change, prescribed burning, and forest management on this tour. York, Stephens, and Fire Network members maintained that California policy is moving in the right direction, but encouraged staff to cease measuring impact through one lens. “It's not just about how many acres have been treated,” underscored Stephens, “it's about impact. It's about changing the direction of the forest.”
- Author: Grace Dean
The window of summer is closed, and that ‘back to school' feeling everyone knows has settled in- the excitement, the nerves, the first 7AM breakfast you've had in the last few months. However, the magic of summer lingers, and is a bit more difficult to express in words alone. Rachelle Hedges, Project and Policy Analyst for Berkeley Forests, knows that magic all too well. She sees it every year on the faces of students who come to UC Berkeley's Forestry Field Camp and its new little sibling, Forestry Mini-Camp. Both summer camps take place at 100-year old Plumas National Forest site. Hedges sets the scene: “It's incredibly peaceful: no cars, and no lights. You see people fall in love with the forest and forestry, and the specialness of these people and this place.”
While Forestry Field Camp is a summer school session for University of California undergraduates, Mini-Camp is a bit different. This one-week condensed version of the eight-week Field Camp serves as both an outreach and educational tool. Its purpose is to get community college students from around the state and UC Berkeley undergraduates interested in UC Berkeley's Ecosystem Management and Forestry major.
For Hedges, getting a cohort of community college students to Mini-Camp was also a chance to demystify the UC Berkeley experience. Hedges specifically targeted colleges that have forestry or natural resource programs, but there was no requirement that students had to have applied to UC Berkeley. By chance, most of the cohort came from urban California communities.
The Mini-Camp curriculum is loosely based on the Forestry Field Camp, but there is an emphasis on getting students out of the classroom and into the outdoors. “We want students to have fun!” Hedges emphasizes. “A lot of what camp has to offer is the fun: swimming at the lake, hiking- we want students to get excited and interested in a future at Berkeley.” Interspersing the summer camp experience was a full day on Sierra Nevada forest ecology taught by UC Berkeley instructor Rainbow de Silva, a forestry skills training led by UC ANR forestry advisor Susie Kocher, a forestry workforce presentation by Hedges, and other glimpses into forestry academia and its career world. The week was capped off by an alumni breakfast, where students could interact with past forestry majors and witness the closeness of the UC Berkeley forestry alumni network.
The Berkeley forestry network is one of the major's strongest selling points, notes Hedges. For the community college students who attended Mini-Camp, they're able to make those connections even before becoming a Berkeley student. “Now,” Hedges begins, “they have a preexisting network.” The feeling of starting a new school, the blend of excitement and nervousness? When those students start at Berkeley, that feeling will be eased by the people already waiting for them with "open arms".
“Forestry is a concept that's a bit hard to understand if you haven't experienced it,” Hedges expresses. The nature of Mini-Camp, to blend the fun with education, gives students that opportunity to see how they fit into this field. For some community college students, applying to Berkeley was an immediate goal once they left camp. Others weren't so sure, but Hedges doesn't see that as a bad thing: “Word of mouth is great, they'll go back and tell their friends about the experience. We don't need everyone to go to a four-year university. We just need to get people excited about forestry.”
- Author: UC Berkeley Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management
Land use change in agricultural frontiers can have far-reaching social and environmental implications, such as habitat loss, water contamination, or worker demographic shifts — particularly when it involves the rapid expansion of a new industry such as cannabis production. A recent study published in Landscape and Urban Planning offers an interdisciplinary perspective on the drivers of cannabis production in rural areas, using interviews with farmers and spatial modeling to uncover key factors.
Led by researchers from UC Berkeley's Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management (ESPM) and the Cannabis Research Center, the article “Where money grows on trees: a socio-ecological assessment of land use change in an agricultural frontier” provides a social-ecological systems approach for assessing drivers of cannabis production in Southern Oregon, using interviews with farmers and spatial modeling to uncover key factors.
"Unlike other crops, we have less understanding of where and how cannabis is grown, making it an important area of ongoing research," said Van Butsic, a professor of cooperative extension in ESPM and the senior author of the study.
The researchers interviewed 14 cannabis farmers to identify major themes around their relationships with land use, and used those themes to generate predictors for models of land use change. Most of the interview-derived drivers were significantly associated with cannabis distribution and development, including parcel size, human footprint, distance to the nearest cannabis farm, the density of local cannabis production, clearable land cover, farm zoning, elevation, roughness, and distance to rivers. The interview data also provided insights into the relationship of cannabis with social and environmental dynamics.
“We gained many insights from the interview data,” said lead author and ESPM postdoctoral scholar Phoebe Parker-Shames. “For example, we knew from previous research that cannabis development tends to be clustered, but we understand a little better now that this is related to the ways in which cannabis farmers rely on each other to share knowledge, labor, and navigate uncertainty during difficult policy changes.”
One of the major themes that emerged from the interview data was the environmental stewardship values of the farmers. “There is a large untapped potential for education and management outreach to target farmers who got into this industry in part because of their ability to connect with the land,” Parker-Shames said. “The farmers we spoke to had a genuine desire to learn best practices in an industry without a lot of formal standards for production. I'm grateful that they were willing to share their experiences and insights with us.”
Additional Berkeley co-authors include ESPM professor Justin Brashares and alumni Hekia Bodwitch (PhD '17 ESPM). The study's findings provide valuable insights into the drivers of cannabis production and the environmental stewardship values of cannabis farmers, which can inform environmental policy, regulation, and best practices for sustainable cannabis production.