Sustainable Local Wood Webinar Series: Forest to Cities

Learn how engineered wood products allow us to build bigger with wood, and how this new technology is an effective alternative to carbon-intensive concrete and steel construction.

Learn how engineered wood products, also known as mass timber, allow us to build bigger with wood, as an alternative to carbon-intensive concrete and steel construction. This webinar will highlight a flagship mass timber building in Massachusetts—the John W. Olver Design Building at UMass Amherst. With Dr. Peggi Clouston, Professor of Wood Mechanics and Timber Engineering in the Building and Construction Technology program, as our featured speaker, we will hear about the innovative design and construction of the building, how it functions as a space of education and inspiration for the next generation of builders, and new research on the types of local tree species that can be used for mass timber.

Together with New England Forestry Foundation Chief Operating Officer Frank Lowenstein, we will then turn to where the raw material for mass timber is typically sourced and the potential for big climate change mitigation benefits when it is generated from Exemplary Forestry practices that are designed to store more carbon in the woods, while continuing to produce renewable wood products.