Promoting Urban Wood on Social Media Platforms

Are you aware of the non-profit organization called The Southern Group of State Foresters?  It helps 15 agencies in the southeastern United States, Puerto Rico, and Virgin Islands access the resources they need to manage and protect their forests.  From wildfires to diseased community trees, Southern Group of State Foresters (SGSF) is a vocal advocate of tree conservation.

After visiting SGSF website, I learned that the organization launched its initiative, the Southern Community Wood Utilization Group, last summer at the International Society of Arboriculture conference.  “SGSF’s involvement ensures that the initiative is grounded in a deep understanding of the challenges and opportunities associated with community wood utilization. Their leadership will guide the group in promoting best practices, raising awareness and supporting the development of a thriving market for community wood products.” 

Here are the goals of this new UW group:

1. Understand how suppliers, producers and buyers contribute to “healthy and thriving urban and community forests”.
2. Establish cooperative networks to maximize urban wood utilization within every community of the southern region.
3. Support urban wood markets; communicate the economic value of urban wood to the public. 

One way outreach element that any urban wood enthusiast can replicate is  Southern Group of State Foresters’ Urban Wood Wednesdays campaign.  Visit the campaign website to access graphics and captions for your social media posts.  You will find statistics and talking points to guide the creation of your own graphics and captions.  The main goal of this social media campaign is to magnify various ways in which wood suppliers and primary/secondary producers are diverting urban wood away from community landfills.

At the Urban Wood Wednesdays website, you’ll find six guidelines for a successful social media post as well as topics for SGSF’s scheduled posts.  And don’t forget that #forestproud has excellent social media content available for your use, too!  To access pubic outreach videos, banner images, and social media materials (images and recommended text), click here.

Wood Vaults:  An Ancient Process Worthy of Consideration?

By Kathryn B. Reis, Randolph County Soil and Water Conservation District, Environmental Educator

Is “wood vaulting” an ancient technique, worthy of consideration for keeping carbon trapped in fallen trees?

I am a strong advocate for the creation of circular economies at the community scale to repurpose urban wood.  Yet an October 2024 article in Anthropocene Magazine offers a possible management solution for urban wood that cannot be processed for furniture, flooring, siding, functional art and other marketable goods.

Note, the fabrication of firewood, wood pellets, and biochar are excellent practices for turning the residual waste of urban wood processing into a usable (and marketable) product.  But as the Anthropocene article suggests, if the environmental conditions are right, perhaps burying wood deep within the ground is another strategy we can add to our toolbox for climate change mitigation.

And what are those environmental conditions?  Clay rich soil with extremely low permeability and hardly any oxygen, which limits the presence of decomposing organisms (insects, fungi). 

Delve more into the nitty-gritty details of this ancient practice by reading the research of Ning Zeng and his colleagues in Science Magazine.  Zeng is a climate scientist at the University of Maryland.