A chance encounter with a fallen tree started professor and amateur woodworker Samuel Sherrill thinking: Is there a better way to stretch our precious natural resources? The question led to the writing of Harvesting Urban Timber. Sherrill explains how to identify potential urban timber, how to safely harvest it and convert it into useful lumber.
Harvesting Urban Timber explains the importance of harvesting urban trees and how to do so. Each alternative use described is illustrated through case studies of several municipalities and their respective programs of urban timber utilization. Includes full-color photos and more than 20 charts.
How do we provide for and nurture millions of people without destroying the planet in the process? Author Doug Kent, an environmental specialist, believes a vital element in the solution is recognizing that urban landscapes are an essential partner in everyone’s wellbeing. He argues that urban landscapes can and must work harder. Urban landscapes can provide part of our energy needs, help cool our buildings and public spaces, help us make the most of our precious water. They can also help combat air pollution and reduce the likelihood of allergies and asthma. They can provide landscape materials and even contribute to our timber supply. Doug also advocates turning landscapes into a food source, and/or a perfumery, pharmacy, soap shop, or craft store. Doug has over 12 years of research in this book. He has spent years doing literature reviews, and many more years concocting, consuming, crafting, distilling, propagating, retting, sawing, sowing, and weaving its many recommendations. He has also travelled the length and width of California many times to interview the people and businesses already doing this incredible work. Regenerating Essential Goods and Services is not a manifesto. It is a user’s manual. You are the creative and energetic force that will ultimately drive sustainability and regeneration. Let’s go.
This report presents eight case studies of successful urban wood waste recycling projects and businesses. These studies document the success of recovered products such as lumber and lumber products, mulch, boiler fuel, and alternative cover for landfills. Overall, wood waste accounts for about 17% of the total waste received at municipal solid waste landfills in the United States. In 1998, the amount of urban wood waste generated was more than 160 million tons, with 29.6 million tons available for recovery. Similarly, in 1998, new construction in the United States generated 8.7 million tons of wood waste, with 6.6 million tons available for recovery; demolition waste generated 26.4 million tons of wood waste, with 9 million tons available for recovery. The case studies were selected on the basis of the following criteria: an emphasis on partnerships among communities, businesses, governments, and non-governmental organizations; efficient use of funds; sustained creation of enterprise; and a high benefit/cost ratio.
Salvage logging—removing trees from a forested area in the wake of a catastrophic event such as a wildfire or hurricane—is highly controversial. Policymakers and those with an economic interest in harvesting trees typically argue that damaged areas should be logged so as to avoid “wasting” resources, while many forest ecologists contend that removing trees following a disturbance is harmful to a variety of forest species and can interfere with the natural process of ecosystem recovery. Salvage Logging and Its Ecological Consequences brings together three leading experts on forest ecology to explore a wide range of issues surrounding the practice of salvage logging. They gather and synthesize the latest research and information about its economic and ecological costs and benefits, and consider the impacts of salvage logging on ecosystem processes and biodiversity. The book examines • what salvage logging is and why it is controversial • natural and human disturbance regimes in forested ecosystems • differences between salvage harvesting and traditional timber harvesting • scientifically documented ecological impacts of salvage operations • the importance of land management objectives in determining appropriate post-disturbance interventions Brief case studies from around the world highlight a variety of projects, including operations that have followed wildfires, storms, volcanic eruptions, and insect infestations. In the final chapter, the authors discuss policy management implications and offer prescriptions for mitigating the impacts of future salvage harvesting efforts. Salvage Logging and Its Ecological Consequences is a “must-read” volume for policymakers, students, academics, practitioners, and professionals involved in all aspects of forest management, natural resource planning, and forest conservation.
Keeping Bees in Towns and Cities features everything an urbanite needs to know to start keeping bees: how to select the perfect hive, how to buy bees, how to care for a colony, how to harvest honey, and what to do in the winter. Urban beekeeping has particular challenges and needs, and this book highlights the challenges and presents practices that are safe, legal, and neighbor-friendly. The text is rounded out with profiles of urban beekeepers from all over the world, including public hives at the Maryland Center for Horticulture, beekeeping on an office balcony in Melbourne, Australia, and a poolside hive at a hotel in Vancouver, British Columbia.
A comprehensive, full-color guide explains how to make one's garden completely environmentally friendly, in a book that looks at managing resources, choosing materials, design ideas, plant choices, growing one's own food and more. Original.
This book provides a cross-section of all outstanding experience in all fields of tropical forestry under a drastically changing environment induced by climate change. It sheds light on the existing know-how and presents it in a concise and efficient way for the scientist and professional in charge of planning, implementing and evaluating forest resources. The Tropical Forestry Handbook provides proven and/or promising alternative concepts which can be applied to solve organizational, administrative and technical challenges prevailing in the tropics. Presented are state of the art methods in all fields concerning tropical forestry. Emphasize is given to methods which are adapted to- and which safeguard - environmental conditions.
