Southern Urban and Interface Forests - What's New

Years ago, John Warner, an urban district forester with the Texas A&M Forest Service and a longtime InterfaceSouth partner, recognized that landownership patterns in the southeastern part of the state around Houston were changing rapidly. Latino, Chinese, and Vietnamese families from Houston were moving to the interface and buying 5–20 acre tracts of forestland within his rapidly growing multi-county district. He realized that the agency was going to have to change its communication approach to reach many of these new forest landowners. “As an agency, we know how to communicate with traditional landowners,” says Warner. “However, outreach to different ethnic groups is something new for us.”

In 2007, an opportunity to reach these new landowners presented itself when Warner met Tamberly Conway, a graduate student in the College of Forestry and Agriculture at Stephen F. Austin State University. Conway was working with Latino Legacy, a program established by the university and funded by the USDA Forest Service’s [USFS] More Kids in the Woods program to connect Latino communities with the public lands and forestlands in the Houston area through bilingual conservation education programming. (Conway has since been hired by the USFS as a conservation education specialist working remotely in Texas for the USFS’s office in Washington, D.C.)

In this issue of our quarterly bulletin, titled Leaves of Change, you will learn about a collaborative project that is creating a scientific framework for the ecological assessment and sustainable management of the Tampa Bay watershed’s trees and forested ecosystems along the urban-wildland continuum. You will also learn about the Centers’ recent training and outreach activities, recommended resources, and upcoming events related to urban and interface forestry.

This new publication, jointly developed by InterfaceSouth and the Unversity of Florida IFAS, can help you select shrubs for your landscape, particularly for homes in the southern United States.

To view this publication, click here.

The USDA Forest Service and the University of Florida unveiled a new book this week that gives utility and energy companies, planners, investors and others the latest information on the viability of the wood to energy market in wildland-urban interface areas of the South. The free book, titled “Wood to Energy: Using Southern Interface Fuels for Bioenergy,” is posted online at: http://www.srs.fs.fed.us/pubs/gtr/gtr_srs132.pdf.

“Wood to Energy: Using Southern Interface Fuels for Bioenergy” addresses topics including woody biomass sources in the wildland-urban interface; harvesting, reprocessing and delivery of woody biomass in the WUI; biomass conversion to energy and fuels; the economic availability of woody biomass; economic impact analysis of woody biomass energy development; and public perceptions of using wood for fuel.
 

InterfaceSouth recently developed a fact sheet about research conducted by the Southern Research Station and the National Institute of Standards and Technology that demonstrated that wildfire prevention education pays for itself many times over in the state of Florida. Wildfire prevention education aims to teach the public about the dangers of accidentally igniting fires, with the expectation that these activities will lead to fewer wildfires.

To view this fact sheet visit:
https://www.urbanforestrysouth.org/products/fact-sheets/economic-benefits/the-economic-benefits-of-wildfire-prevention-education/index_html