Forestry
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A lot of the Southeast is covered in forest now. In Georgia alone, about 70 percent of the land is now forested. Producers used to be able to make a good living off of forestry during the housing booms of previous decades, but now they are barely getting by. The Wall Street Journal has a…
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If you drive through southeast Alabama or southwest Georgia, you can still see plenty of damage from Hurricane Michael, which hit there in 2018. Researchers with Auburn University’s School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences are currently working on a “Downed Timber Initiative,” which aims to develop new methods of using fallen trees and branches decimated…
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Earlier this summer in mid-August, Hurricane Laura deepened rapidly just before it came onshore in western Louisiana. In some ways it behaved quite a bit like Hurricane Michael did in 2018 when it hit Mexico Beach FL and crossed Georgia, causing a lot of agricultural damage. This time it was Louisiana and Arkansas that saw…
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A story this week in Yale Climate Connections discusses how some French wine growers are planting their vines next to trees to help keep temperatures more moderate, which will extend the ability of French varietals to grow in areas that are warming up due to climate change. Because most growers cannot move their vineyards, they…
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Southerly Magazine has an interesting story about the longleaf pine’s history in the Southeast. It was nearly eliminated by logging and development and then replaced by other species. But it has a long history of surviving in the region for thousands of year before humans lived here…
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If you live in an area affected in 2018 by Hurricane Michael and have trees, you may be interested in attending the 2020 annual meeting of the Southeastern Society of American Foresters (SESAF) in Panama City Beach, FL on February 23-25. The theme of their meeting this year is “Recovery From the Storm – Where…
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While I have been away, I’ve read lots of interesting stories about weather and climate in the news. Here are a few I really liked, in no particular order. Forbes.com: Five social media posts about weather that need to go away in 2020 Yale Climate Connections: The case for growing lettuce in New England, even…