Amador County – The Northern California Society of American Foresters plans its 2011 Summer Field Meeting for this Friday and Saturday (Aug. 5-6) in Jackson.

The meeting’s focus will be “Biomass: From Forests to Energy,” with an “informative and enjoyable program to pique everyone’s interest and increase knowledge about the opportunities and challenges for foresters, landowners and agencies.”

The meeting will include a winery dinner and evening speaker to set the stage for a Saturday field tour, fuel site visits in the Mokelumne River watershed, lunch at a hunting preserve on the shore of Lake Camanche, and a tour of the Buena Vista Biomass Power plant in Ione.

The Society’s Field Meeting is an “opportunity to learn, network and visit with foresters and others interested in this important developing issue,” organizers said.

The NorCal Society of American Foresters summer meeting kicks off with wine tasting and dinner at Avio Vineyards in Sutter Creek, with guest speaker James D. Boyd, Vice Chairman of the California Energy Commission.

Anne Heissenbuttel, of the SAF’s planning committee for the field meeting, said Boyd will talk about bio energy standards. Heissenbuttel spoke at the Amador County Board of Supervisors meeting last week to remind people of the Field Meeting. She said it is open to anyone, but there is a registration fee.

Registration is Friday night in the Jackson City lot behind Mel & Faye’s Diner, where attendees will get opening remarks and can organize carpools.

Saturday’s field tour will visit past and current forest thinning operations designed to create fuel breaks for adjacent subdivisions. The group will travel up Highway 88 to the Pioneer area for field stops to see work on “fire hazard reduction and wood utilization” and “fuels management and thinning for biomass.”

Attendees will also “discuss the economics and environmental implications of fuel treatment options and end uses, including biomass for energy production.” They will also address the challenges of working in the wildland-urban interface and the Mokelumne River drainage.

Field Meeting attendees will take lunch at the private Camanche Hills Hunting Preserve, “where managers will describe land management challenges” in the Moke watershed, which supplies water to Bay Area residents while providing diverse recreation for locals and visitors.

They will also “explore the relationship between hazardous fuel treatment and fire safety in the upper watershed and water resource management down river.” They will also look at the difficulties and “social and economic benefits of building an energy facility in California.” The field meeting will end at the Buena Vista Biomass Power plant on Coal Mine Road, with a tour of the 18-megawatt generation facility being re-powered as a “long-term sustainable biomass energy generation facility.”

Story by Jim Reece This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.