News - August 2023


Alumni Spotlight: Harry Sanders III

‘I thoroughly love what I do’ It’s been almost a decade since Harry Sanders graduated from Warnell and began working for his family’s logging business, Sanders Logging. But for Sanders, it seems like only yesterday he was walking through the woods at Whitehall with his classmates. Time really does fly when you’re having fun. “I thoroughly love what I do,” said Sanders (BSFR ’14), who earlier this year was named the Georgia Forestry Association’s…


An essential relationship: Measuring carbon in soil

Note: This story is part of a special issue of The Warnell Log focused on carbon How do you measure carbon in soil? Warnell researchers are doing the math. Don’t let the “Soil Biogeochemistry Lab” name fool you. It’s all about carbon. “Nearly everything in my lab is carbon related,” said Rebecca Abney, assistant professor of forest and disturbed soils at Warnell. The combination of soil and carbon can be powerful, she argues—the thing is, too…


Properties’ appraisal: Studying carbon sequestration through tree growth, density and chemistry

Note: This story is part of a special issue of The Warnell Log focused on carbon If you want to quantify carbon, what conversion equations or models do you use, and how do you quantify variability? That’s where Warnell associate professor Joe Dahlen comes in. Dahlen is the director of the Wood Quality Consortium, a cooperative effort with the forest industry and the U.S. Forest Service to better understand wood coming from managed loblolly pine…


Doing the math: Equations for calculating trees’ carbon amount

Note: This story is part of a special issue of The Warnell Log focused on carbon If you want to calculate the amount of carbon stored in a tree or in forests, Warnell researcher Dehai Zhao has you covered. For more than a decade, Zhao, a senior research scientist who specializes in statistics and forest biometrics, has developed a series of equations to more accurately determine the green weight, dry weight, and carbon amount in southern pine…


Pellet power: Could biomass become a carbon-neutral fuel for heat and electricity?

Note: This story is part of a special issue of The Warnell Log focused on carbon. To best understand how woody biomass, such as wood pellets, can become a sustainable energy solution, you need to consider your perspective. As small trees and other woody debris are harvested, other trees are growing across the landscape. So, argues Warnell associate professor Puneet Dwivedi, it’s not that a tree that was cut to produce pellets would take another…


Storage units: Mass timber buildings offer a carbon-friendly option for new commercial construction

Note: This story is part of a special issue of The Warnell Log focused on carbon. If you’re looking to store some carbon, wood-frame buildings will give you a big bang for your buck. This works great for houses—but can you scale that up to commercial buildings? Enter: Mass timber. Made from lumber that’s glued into larger panels or columns, mass timber is an established building products market in Europe and the Pacific Northwest. Now, it’s…


Travel sustainably: If you're planning a trip, look beyond flight emissions

Search for a flight and you’ll likely see a new feature listed alongside the price: Carbon emissions.  Perhaps it’s more of a marketing ploy than concrete data. Nevertheless, more travelers are thinking about their carbon footprint than ever before. This isn’t too surprising as aviation emissions have increased, now accounting for between 2.5% and 3.5% of global CO2 emissions (depending on your calculations).  But are emissions the…


First in flight: Aviation industry looks to UGA research to lower carbon emissions

Note: This story is part of a special issue of The Warnell Log focused on carbon. You can’t power a large, commercial jet with solar panels. Advances in hydrogen technology still can’t get a plane across the ocean. So, if the aviation sector wants to reduce its carbon footprint, where do they turn?  Biofuels. “Carbon in the aviation sector mostly comes from fuel, and this is why the industry wants to replace conventional aviation fuel,…


Blown away by changes: Hurricanes that hit the South can have an effect on carbon

Note: This story is part of a special issue of The Warnell Log focused on carbon. The aftermath of a hurricane includes downed trees, damaged saplings, salt water intrusion—and a lot less carbon. That’s one calculation made by Warnell researcher Asiful Alam, a Ph.D. student (and M.S. graduate) who is studying the effects of catastrophic hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico. Funded by a grant through the Gulf Research Program of the National…

The Flint River watershed as mapped by Behnoosh Abbasnezhad
Helping land help you: The role carbon plays in ecosystem services

Note: This story is part of a special issue of The Warnell Log focused on carbon. There’s a good chance you’ve been to the head of the Flint River and didn’t know it. Just south of downtown Atlanta, its starting point sits underneath Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, the world’s busiest airport. As its waters emerge from underground pipes and through south Fulton County, it flows past developed and undeveloped land. Warnell doctoral…

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