2009 Urban Forestry Conference October 22-23 Lipscomb University, Nashville

Conference Cost
$125 before Oct 15
$110 before Aug 22
Save $15 with TUFC membership

Greening Your Community

This conference features expert presentations, panel discussions, and hands-on demonstrations about greening your community with urban forestry. From planners and managers to foresters and field crews, everyone involved with growing and managing trees will take home plenty of insights to help you do your job.

Who should attend: Arborists, foresters, consultants, tree board members, landscape architects, developers, builders, city planners, urban foresters, and tree lovers.

Affordable pricing puts the conference within the reach of any budget. If you only go to one urban forestry event this year, this is the one to attend. REGISTER NOW AND SAVE! Early-bird deadline is September 25.

UK firm scouts Georgia for wood chips

UK firm scouts Georgia for wood chips
Saturday, July 18, 2009, 12:15pm EDT

UK firm MGT Power Limited is scouting the Southeast, including Georgia, for a steady source of wood chips for a massive new biomass electricity plant.

MGT recently got the nod from the British government to proceed with the development of the $815 million Tees Renewable Energy Plant to be located in northeast England. The plant will use some 2.65 million tons of wood chips a year. The plant will be one of the largest of its kind in the world, generating enough electricity to meet the needs of about 600,000 homes, according to a company release.

"The Government's consent is welcome news as we are at an advanced stage with the forestry establishment for fuel sourcing and power plant procurement," said Chris Moore, director of MGT Power. "We can now appoint our banks, conclude the financing and reach agreement with our preferred technology bidders. We are moving toward an early construction start with a high degree of confidence."

The Tees Renewable Energy Plant will begin commercial operation in late 2012.

"Other similarly sized biomass plants are proposed in other parts of the country, but our Teesport project is currently two years ahead of the pack and likely to be one of the first to be operational. It comes at a time when replacement UK energy generation capacity is urgently needed," Moore said.

MGT's plan is to source woodchips from the Southeast, as well as other locations throughout North America and South America and the Baltic States. While no supply agreements have been formalized, the company is having advanced discussions with suppliers and shipping facilities throughout the Southeast US as part of its efforts to formulate specific plans, a company spokesperson said.

MGT has traveled to nearly all areas in the southern US that have both an ample supply of wood chips and easy access to ports that can export chips. Georgia is included in that area, the spokesperson added.

Forest2Market is acting as MGT's North American advisor for supply chain issues.


Scot Quaranda
Campaign Director
Dogwood Alliance
www.dogwoodalliance.org or www.nofreerefills.org
828.242.3596

National Roundtable on Sustainable Forests (RSF) Meeting

Please hold October 14 and 15, 2009 for the next National Roundtable on Sustainable Forests (RSF) Meeting which will be in Washington, DC. The primary purpose of the Meeting is to discuss, shape, and make plans for implementing a stakeholder Sustainable Forests Action Strategy, a document which is currently being developed by a diverse group of RSF participants as a companion document to the draft 2010 National Report on Sustainable Forests. It is hoped that the Action Strategy will help the forest community move beyond just examining significant changes in forest conditions between the 2003 and draft 2010 National Reports on Sustainable Forests, to an open national dialogue among stakeholders with diverse interests to develop priority actions to be taken in the next two years to improve the conservation and sustainable management of the nation’s forests. The National RSF meeting will be a critical opportunity to broaden stakeholder support and momentum to take action on some of the key forest challenges in the United States. Other agenda topics will include progress on developing the Regional Indicator Initiative, other efforts to accomplish the objectives of the RSF Work Plan, and the potential role of the RSF in preparation for the International Year of Forests in 2011. 

Details on location and an agenda will be sent out as they are available.

The draft Action Strategy will become available for additional stakeholder input in early August. To help build stakeholder awareness and support of the Action Strategy leading up to the October National RSF Meeting, the RSF Communications Outreach Work Group will be contacting you and other forest stakeholders to talk about ways in which you may participate in shaping and potentially playing a role in implementing the Action Strategy. Please stay tuned.

We hope you will be able to join us at the October National RSF Meeting. 

Best regards,
Meridian Institute

Sarah Walen, Senior Mediator
Shawn Walker, Support Coordinator
__________________________________
Shawn Walker
Project Coordinator | Meridian Institute
1920 L Street NW, Suite 500
Washington, DC 20036, United States
+1.202.354.6450 phone
+1.703.509.2396 mobile
+1.202.354.6441 fax
shawnwalker@merid.org
www.merid.org

Tennessee's timber industry - an assessment from USFS

The above referenced publication is now available online and can be accessed at:

http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/pubs/33116

If you'd like to receive a hard copy of the report, please reply to this message and include the number of copies you want, and your mailing address if it was not on your completed questionnaire.

You're receiving this notification based on your criteria in our mailing list database. Please let me know if you've received it in error and I'll correct the database.

Thank you,

Janet E. Griffin
865-862-2079 

TN Urban Forestry Newsletter

Greetings,
 
For the Summer Branching Out electronic newsletter, click on this web link: http://tufc.com/pdf/summer2009.pdf
 
Note the dates of the annual conference and tree climb. Please forward this information to others who may find it of interest.
 
Thank you for your interest in urban and community trees. Trees make a difference!
 
Jennifer Smith
Executive Director
Tennessee Urban Forestry Council
tufc@comcast.net
615-352-8985 Fax 352-6762