Forest Journalism for a Sustainable Future
Editor’s note: What is mass timber? Sometimes called “advanced timber,” this relatively new and as-yet evolving building product takes several forms. For a primer on products in the mass timber family, we turned to rethinkwood.com. We think you’ll find their definitions useful in better understanding and engaging in discussions about the use of mass timber in our built environment. [Read more…]
Oregon is bullish on the future of high-rises built from locally sourced wood, and Portland is the proof.
At last month’s Mass Timber Conference, an all-day tour took visitors to a few of the city’s timber buildings – from a fire station made from wood, including fire-charred siding on the entranceway, to Carbon 12, a classy condominium development in North Portland that, at eight stories, is the nation’s tallest wood building.
At Albina Yards, Lever Architecture founder Thomas Robinson not only touted that four-story masterpiece – the nation’s first to use domestically produced cross-laminated timber (known as CLT) for its structural system – but also his next project: Framework, a skyscraper built of wood. [Read more…]
It was risky, Paul Summerfelt concedes, to ask voters for an unprecedented $10 million bond issue for forest and watershed restoration.
But the greater risk was to do nothing – to wait for the inevitable wildfire that damaged, or destroyed, the city of Flagstaff’s drinking water supply.
So Summerfelt, the city’s wildland fire program manager, took a deep breath and joined his colleagues in local government and the firefighting community and made the request. [Read more…]
The National Forest Foundation on Wednesday announced the winner of the 2016/2017 Barrett Foundation Business Concept Challenge. This unique competition provides awards for the best entrepreneurial approaches that help to solve one or more of the challenges facing America’s 193-million-acre national forest system.
Sponsor Dr. Craig R. Barrett, former chairman and CEO of Intel and current chairman of the NFF’s Board of Directors, described the purpose of this competition as, “stimulating new ideas and cultivating the next generation of entrepreneurial natural resource and business leaders.”
This year’s winner, the Sierra Institute for Community and Environment, submitted an innovative proposal that meets Barrett’s vision of the Challenge.
Most of us know Chuck Leavell from what he calls his “night job,” as the longtime keyboardist for the Rolling Stones.
But Leavell has another gig, and he attacks it with equal fervor: forestry.
Whether managing his 3,000-acre pine and oak plantation in southern Georgia or touring the country preaching the need for widespread forest restoration, Leavell is a passionate advocate for the use and perpetuation of America’s forests.
Now he’s taking that advocacy another step with the production of a documentary television series, “America’s Forests with Chuck Leavell,” which aired its premiere episode earlier this month on Oregon Public Broadcasting and at the International Mass Timber Conference in Portland. (You can watch it online here.)