People
Speakers
Philip A. Araman is a Research Team Leader and Scientist with the USDA Forest Service Southern Research Station and an adjunct faculty member in Wood Science and Forest Products department at Virginia Tech. He and his research team are located the Brooks Forest Products Center at Virginia Tech. His project’s research mission is to develop advanced tree evaluation and processing technologies, automated hardwood processing technologies, develop new or improved products made from low-and medium-grade hardwood sawtimber and nonselect species, and to develop effective wood product recovery, reuse, and recycling. They have also conducted non-timber forest products research and urban tree crown evalutions. Please visit the listed web sites for more information. Phil has extensive experience in pallet production, recovery, repair, and reuse, and in processing logs into lumber, and lumber into pallets, flooring, furniture and cabinet products, and in international trade of hardwood products.
Robert Bardon, Ph.D., has been a member of the North Carolina State University Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources since 1996 and currently is the Department Extension Leader. Dr. Bardon received his Doctor of Philosophy in Forestry (Forest Biology - Wood Science) from Iowa State University. He is a member of the North Carolina State University Academy of Outstanding Faculty Engaged in Extension. Dr. Bardon is a registered forester with the State of North Carolina and a certified forester with the Society of American Foresters. Dr. Bardon’s professional interests are in non-industrial private forestry, wildland-urban interface, urban forestry, and extension education.
Matt Dufon has a B.S. in Environmental Studies and has spent the past few years as a working professional designing and implementing sustainability programs for the event industry both locally and internationally. Matt is a hobbyist sawyer in the Asheville area and works as a freelance sustainability consultant and independent contractor. He joined with the Asheville Treecyclers Coop early this year to aid in the development of the cooperative, to provide administrative assistance, and to help "Green" the process of harvesting urban timber.
Chris Holmgren has been a carpenter and woodworking professional for the last 30 years. For the last 13 years he has been conducting green woodworking including making chairs using Eighteenth Century tools and techniques and hand carving Appalachian and Scandinavian bowls and spoons. Chris is the proprietor of Seneca Creek Joinery in Dickerson, Maryland where he continues his modern millwork and cabinetry business as well as running a small band saw mill and kiln. Seneca Creek Joinery is a vertically integrated woodworking business equipped to take logs from the stump to finished furniture, cabinetry, custom sawmilling and drying of lumber. Chris is a co-founder of the Community Woodlands Alliance and Seneca Creek Joinery is the demonstration model for CWA's wood utilization project. See http://www.woodsurgeon.com/.
Brian McCalley LeCouteur has worked as a Regional Urban Forester and Environmental Planner for the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG) since 1993. He holds a Masters in Urban and Environmental Planning from the University of Virginia, School of Architecture and a Bachelor of Arts in Geography from Mary Washington College. His horticultural and arboricultural knowledge is derived from many years of experience working alongside his father, Eugene H. LeCouteur, in their nursery and landscape contracting business in Fredericksburg, Virginia during the 1970’s and 1980’s. Brian facilitates issues among regional forestry professionals in Metropolitan Washington, DC and works to improve urban forest conditions in the Chesapeake Bay watershed by planting riparian buffer, developing forestry policy and urban tree canopy goals. Through the Metropolitan Washington Green Infrastructure Demonstration Project, Brian oversaw the production of the first regional green infrastructure GIS map series that provided comprehensive land cover data for the 3020 square mile metropolitan Washington region. Most recently, Brian has been managing a USFS project harvesting trees from the streets of urban and suburban Washington and diverting the saw logs from the landfill to the sawmill. For more information, please visit: https://www.mwcog.org/environment/green/
Dan Rider is Associate Director of the Maryland Forest Service. His primary responsibilities are increased utilization and subsequent marketing of forest products. Although about half of his time is dedicated to policy issues affecting commercial aspects of forestry, Dan’s passion is on-the-ground promotion of economic uses of locally produced wood. Maryland offers a diversity of forest opportunities, ranging from the wood-based rural economies to the untapped resources of the urban forest. Dan started his forestry career in 1987 in the private sector, earned his B.S. in Forest and Wildlife Management from Virginia Tech in 1991, and was a private forestry consultant prior to joining the Maryland Forest Service in 2003.
Nathan Schomber, the son of a carpenter and wood craftsman, has been working with wood since childhood. Practically growing up a carpenter in the woodshop, he has a love for wood and trees. In combination with his natural appreciation of the outdoors, this has led Nathan to pursue study in wilderness skills and primitive technology. He has attended and taught at The Tracker School in New Jersey and California and graduated 36 levels of study over 8 years. Subsequently, he has worked as the Head Instructor at the Aboriginal Survival Arts Program (ASAP) in central Illinois for over 3 years, focusing heavily upon trees and woodworking. Nathan also worked as a woodshop teacher at Ranch Hope For Boys, a residential program for troubled youth.
He is also a carpenter, traditional bow maker, an artist working in wood carving, and a Woodmizer sawmill operator. Nathan owns and manages Woodsmith Portable Mill Service, LLC., based in the Greater Asheville area in N.C., and is also the founder of the Asheville Treecyclers Coop, a network of tree and wood products businesses dedicated to reutilizing currently wasted urban trees to their highest value uses. The ATC is developing a partnership with the Biltmore Estate to Treecycle their urban trees into wood products. Nathan lives with his expecting wife and 4 year old daughter in the mountains outside of Asheville, North Carolina.
Sam Sherrill, Ph.D. (economics) is a professor in the School of Planning at the University of Cincinnati where he teaches courses in economics and methods of research and conducts research on ways to make the best use of urban trees once they come down. He is the author of Harvesting Urban Timber: A Complete Guide from Linden Publishers. His most recent research project was a survey among southwest Michigan businesses on the amount of wood residue they generated and whether the residue was re-used or treated as solid waste. Another part of this study, conducted by a David MacFarlane, a colleague at Michigan State University, estimated the saw log content of the greater Detroit urban forest. Sam maintains a website, www.harvestingurbantimber.com, where saw mill owners and property owners can connect to pass on potential saw log quality trees. He has given many invited presentations on the subject of harvesting urban timber, including the Tree Care Industry Association (with Steve Bratkovich), the Arbor Day Foundation, and before numerous woodworking groups. Sam’s most recent talk was to the Parks and People Foundation in Baltimore. He has appeared on national television to promote this idea, including the PBS program New Yankee Workshop. Sam is a lifelong woodworker who has used urban trees as the sole source of lumber in his projects for over a decade. He works with his son, Carey, on individual commissions. His wife Pat is a pen turner and also uses urban wood.
Facilitator
Mark Megalos is Assistant Professor and Extension Specialist for NCSU’s Dept. of Forestry and Environmental Resources. His responsibilities cover forest management, reforestation, taxation and conservation opportunities on forested lands. Mark has 25 years of forestry experience in North Carolina. His work history includes outreach, Forest Stewardship and Forest Legacy coordinator, extension specialist and area agent for the N.C. Cooperative Extension Service. He's a wood recycler and obsessive carver when not doing gardening or home improvement.
Conference Organizer
Jana Carp, Assistant Professor of Community and Regional Planning in the Dept. of Geography and Planning at Appalachian State University
