- Posted By: Jaime Adler
- Written by: Steve Quarles, UCCE Forest Specialist
![ASTM members at the Research Review Session in Anaheim, CA.](https://ucanr.edu/blogs/forestrymgmt/blogfiles/7501small.jpg)
The American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) Committee E05 on Fire Standards is meeting this week in Anaheim, California. ASTM is a standards writing organization. Today many task groups met to review and consider changes to standard test methods. For example, the task group that oversees ASTM E-84, Standard Test Method for Surface Burning Characteristics of Building Materials met. This test is used to determine the flame spread rating (Class A, B, or C) for construction materials, and is one of the measures used to describe the performance of deck boards that comply with Chapter 7A of the California Building Code. Chapter 7A is the state code that applies to new construction in California. Today it was announced that a...
- Posted By: Jaime Adler
- Written by: Bill Stewart, UCCE Forest Specialist
![log truck](https://ucanr.edu/blogs/forestrymgmt/blogfiles/7366small.png)
Making estimates of the life cycle benefits of harvested sawlogs are now required as part of every timber harvest plan in California. While forest managers are intimately familiar with what happens in the forest and at the landing, we are dependent on others to synthesize current and historical data to come up with accurate estimates of the ‘carbon footprint’ of sawlogs after they have left our control. Unfortunately, a number of the common calculators used in California to estimate the life cycle benefits from sawlogs depend on historic and poorly documented estimates that significantly undercount the climate benefits of harvested products. This post highlights some noticeable differences between accounting systems...
- Posted By: Richard B Standiford
- Written by: Richard B. Standiford
![Loading logs](https://ucanr.edu/blogs/forestrymgmt/blogfiles/7235small.jpg)
Although the weak housing markets have continued to suppress prices for logs and stumpage for California forest landowners, there has been tremendous growth in opportunities from the export market. This has largely been driven by surges in the demand for west coast logs in China. According to the International Wood Markets Group, Inc. (http://www.woodmarkets.com), the final statistics for 2010 showed that log imports by China increased 22% by in total volume and 49% by value from 2009. This increased demand, coupled with log tarrifs in Russia, have had the effect of increasing the demand for logs from the US, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. This trend appears to be continuing and both the...
- Posted By: Jaime Adler
- Written by: Gareth J Mayhead
I attended the “Wildfire 2” (AKA Building on Science to Implement Landscape Level Treatments for Fire Resilience) conference in McClellan last week. The conference, organized by UC Cooperative Extension and the Forest Service, was a follow-up to the Pre- and Post-Wildfire Forest Management Conference held in February 2010. Wildfire 2 built on the foundations of knowledge presented at the first conference and aimed to look at some of the broader social sustainability impacts of collaboratively based forest management.
- Posted By: Richard B Standiford
- Written by: Gary Nakamura, UC Berkeley Cooperative Extension Forestry Specialist
![Community Forestry 2](https://ucanr.edu/blogs/forestrymgmt/blogfiles/6931small.jpg)
Community-based forestry in California is and has been an effort to manage public, multiple use forests (national forests managed by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management) in an ecologically, economically, and social/politically sustainable manner. This has resulted in the establishment of collaborative groups of diverse stakeholders, local/regional/national communities of interest and communities of place, who stake out common ground for management decisions for public forests, in the hopes of minimizing administrative appeals and lawsuits, of creating ecologically, economically, and socio-politically more stable and sustainable resource dependent communities.
Precursors to community-based forestry...