David Atkins, Author at treesource

Flagstaff’s $10M watershed restoration fund won’t cover needed forest thinning

February 18, 2018 by David Atkins 1 Comment

Flagstaff, Arizona’s wakeup call came in the summer of 2010. Its leaders and citizens haven’t taken public safety or clean drinking water for granted ever since.

That was the year when June’s Schultz wildfire raced across 15,000 acres northeast of Flagstaff on the eastern slopes of the San Francisco Peaks. Remarkably, the fire stayed entirely within the Coconino National Forest boundaries and burned no homes.

Then came northern Arizona’s monsoon season, and a seemingly endless series of floods carried torrents of water out of the burned area and into Flagstaff subdivisions, taking the life of a 12-year-old girl and damaging hundreds of homes.

[Read more…]

VIDEO: Wooden skyscrapers could be the future of cities worldwide

February 4, 2018 by David Atkins Leave a Comment

The global population is projected to reach almost 10 billion people by 2050, and most of them will live in cities.

But how will they be housed, and at what cost to the environment? Already, the space and resources needed to support such huge populations are being met by building up.

This short video by The Economist shows how the world can switch from using energy-intensive non-renewable steel and concrete to a “new” renewable material called wood. [Read more…]

Publisher’s Notebook: Managing forests for carbon storage, wood energy & lumber

January 31, 2018 by David Atkins Leave a Comment

Is using wood for energy renewable? Is it sustainable? Does it destroy forests or make them better managed?

At Treesource, we are in the middle of a series of articles on wood energy. There are some strongly divergent perspectives on the carbon benefits or detriments of using wood for energy.

In my previous career, I was a forest ecologist and forester who developed and managed a program focused on using waste wood to heat schools, hospitals, colleges and more. So this is a debate with which I am familiar.

As with many debates, people often talk past one another because they have different assumptions about the fundamentals of the debate – sometimes out of lack of knowledge, sometimes with the purpose of misleading or diverting the discussion. [Read more…]

Publisher’s Notebook: Chasing winter’s cold with wood-fired heat

January 8, 2018 by David Atkins 1 Comment

Happy New Year! Thank you to our readers who made donations to Treesource last year to help us continue providing in-depth forest-centered journalism.

If you didn’t make a contribution, it is never too late. Just hit the contribute button here. We truly appreciate your support.

Winter has settled in (watch for our photo essay in the coming weeks), and for most of us that means the heat is on, the days are shorter and we are using more electricity. The deep Southeast is even getting a severe dose of cold – weather usually reserved for folks in the northern tier of the country.

The deep freeze, though, makes this a good time to talk about renewable energy from sustainably grown forests. We’re starting that exploration with Marcus Kauffman’s look at Alaskan communities that power their schools with wood-fired boilers. Over the next month, we will also touch on the use of wood to make liquid fuels for cars, trucks and airplanes. The when, why and how’s of whether wood energy does or does not make sense will be explored.

[Read more…]

Publisher’s Notebook: Our promise to readers for the year to come

December 22, 2017 by David Atkins Leave a Comment

Happy holidays to you all!

2017 has been an eventful year for Treesource with our launch in March, the work preparing for the launch, applying and getting our 501(c)3 status as a nonprofit from the IRS and getting lots of positive feedback from people like you who have read our articles.

From drinking water and wooden skyscrapers to wildfires and climate change, we produced and aggregated some important, relevant journalism this year.

We hosted a public forum in Missoula following the state’s epic wildfire season. It focused on how we can learn to live WITH fire, whether you are in New Jersey or California. [Read more…]