What do bratwurst and USDA have in common? The ability to mobilize community members to donate to Feds Feed Families!

On sizzling hot summer days in Madison, Wisconsin, employees of the Agricultural Research Service’s Dairy Forage Research Center fire up their grills with hot dogs, hamburgers, veggie burgers, and of course, brats (short for bratwurst, a German sausage that is especially popular in Wisconsin)  to incentivize donors to keep giving to feed hungry families.

This creative idea was sparked by Jane Marita, a plant molecular geneticist, who wanted to add some energy and excitement to the 2011 Feds Feed Families Campaign. By offering her co-workers free brats in exchange for food pantry donations, Marita noticed a marked increase in donations which resulted in a tremendous total of 2,800 pounds of food collected by the research center in 2011. Read more »

Arthur “Butch” Blazer, USDA Deputy Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment, paid a visit to the U.S. Forest Service Forest Products Laboratory (FPL) in Madison, Wis., recently to convene an important roundtable discussion on wood-to-energy concerns in Wisconsin and the Midwest.

Among the participants were wood scientists and technology transfer authorities from FPL and Forest Service’s Northern Research Station, representatives from the logging and paper industries, academics from the University of Wisconsin – Madison and the Great Lakes Bioenergy Resource Center, state natural resources officials, and other national and regional Forest Service officials. Read more »

Arthur “Butch” Blazer, USDA Deputy Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment, paid a visit to the U.S. Forest Service Forest Products Laboratory (FPL) in Madison, Wis., recently to convene an important roundtable discussion on wood-to-energy concerns in Wisconsin and the Midwest.

Among the participants were wood scientists and technology transfer authorities from FPL and Forest Service’s Northern Research Station, representatives from the logging and paper industries, academics from the University of Wisconsin – Madison and the Great Lakes Bioenergy Resource Center, state natural resources officials, and other national and regional Forest Service officials. Read more »

The largest wood beams ever tested are being studied at the US Forest Service Forest Products Laboratory (FPL) in Madison, Wis. If you’ve ever wondered what 80,000 pounds of load looks or sounds like when applied to a 72-foot-long, 3-ton wood beam, now’s your chance. Bam! View this short video to get a sense of both the size of these glulam beams and the engineering acumen on display at the FPL. Hint: keep the volume up around the :53 second mark.

Glued laminated (glulam) timbers are a manufactured wood product composed of layers of sawn lumber glued together. Glulam beams are typically used in commercial construction to span large open areas, such as in churches or sporting arenas. They make for both an aesthetically pleasing and structurally sound option.

The FPL is one of the few locations worldwide that has the capacity to test such large wood specimens.  As FPL engineer Doug Rammer explains, that capability is key to determining their strength. Read more »

Suppressed growth trees can contain decades of growth rings in a half-inch section of wood.

The Ring Profiler may sound like the title of fantasy novel but in fact it’s an innovative tool U.S. Forest Service scientists are using to better determine how much a tree grows annually. Read more »

The original slogan of the trekking group GreenXC read: Share a Ride, Tell a Story, Save a Park. Now they added and a National Forest (as in the U.S. Forest Service). This is because these young folks (all under 30), embarking on this bold transnational ride-share journey that departs July 27^th, have broadened the focus of its environmental protection campaign to include the myriad of issues facing the U.S. Forest Service and the national forest system.

One of their stops will include the USDA Forest Service, Forest Products Lab, in Madison, WI. The group will tour the world renowned lab and learn a great deal about the science of forestry. Aside from driving through many northern forests including the Gallatin, north of Yellowstone, and Mt Hood in OR, GreenXC will visit in California the oldest living and tallest trees in the world at the Inyo and Sequoia national forests respectively. Read more »