Doctoral Dissertation Survey on Urban Wood Utilization

[balmond]

I am an urban logger hobbyist and doctotral student at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.  My dissertation is on the state of urban logging in the US. One of my key research objectives is to estimate for the first time ever, the amount of urban wood being diverted from landfills into wood products by urban loggers.  I am preparing to launch a short survey of urban sawmills across the country.  I have painstakingly searched the top 200 cities in the US and found most urban mills, but I know there are many I have missed.  If you mill urban wood and would be willing to receive the research survey, please message me direct in the forum.  Participating in this exciting research means you will also receive the summation of the results.   

[doc henderson]

OK

[rusticretreater]

Good luck in your research and I hope your hard work pays off.

[dougtrr2]

Curious, does your study include wood diverted for heating?

Doug in SW IA

[Jeff]

How typicaly achedemic. Goes to facebook convinces me to let him post this, then does not show up to monitor a discussion he innitiated.  So typical.

[doc henderson]

I engaged by PM and was told he would send the survey in June.  Would be nice to do here via the survey mode.

[Jeff]

I can't remember how many times, but its been a few, we have had this same scenario, but the other times I allowed the link to the survey in the post. The person never comes back. I hoped this to be different.

[NewYankeeSawmill]

Yeah, not to be a jerk, but it comes naturally to me...

What is the point? Like, I understand the need to quantify things at some point rather than just have qualitative discussions, and it's great that you want to document a variable, but, did you bother to ask of what use is the data (or it's just an easy way to write a paper)? A handful of tree's get used for mulch instead of diverted to a landfill via chipdrop.com? That needs counting?

Ya know landfill's don't take wood-waste, right? Ask Waste Management, corp., inc. Tree services in this area are required to dispose of their waste at a mulch recycling center, whole companies have sprung up to service the need. Much of the wood North of the Mason Dixon will become firewood and never be tracked, thus never entering the database, producing skewed statistics that are at best an incomplete view of the system.

A Global Warming advocate in search of justification since the fact's no longer fit the figures, would be my guess, but I warned you, I'm a jerk.

[Don P]

I think letting them post a link to their survey is fine. If someone is interested in helping they can go from there. I don't really expect a grad student to have the time or desire to interact much further, their plate is full. We've planted a seed, that's cool. It's hard to see a good successful vendor at the farmer's market leave and go out on their own, but what it means is they have graduated from the incubator. These students are still busy incubating  .

I will admit I saw the thread come back up and was curious to see if balmond had posted more. But, this is better than making a kid write a book report, it involves thinking and research. We were talking about blights and invasives the other day. I read a paper from Virginia Tech written in 1946 as the poo was impacting the impeller here. Kind of neat to read things in their time context. Another lesson from that time, the insect pests were being controlled satisfactorily with DDT. Nothing to worry about. In so many things I have to remind myself not to assume malice where ignorance will suffice. Often enough it is likely my own 

[rusticretreater]

I think you folks might be misunderstanding this a bit.  When one gathers data for a research paper of supposed scientific value and one that will be peer reviewed, that data must conform to certain rules to insure integrity.  The survey itself is carefully constructed to elicit the data in quantifiable terms.  When one pursues a doctoral degree, they have to face a panel of professors and knowledgeable people and defend their paper, the research done and any conclusions reached.

You will note that the request was for folks to contact him directly via PM to participate in the survey.  This will allow the researcher to quantify and classify the participant(hobbyist, business, craftsman, age, level of education, etc.) to give weight to the findings and also note the geographics of participation.  A general online survey is not acceptable as you can't determine the authenticity or veracity of the people responding.

The OP is not looking to monitor this thread, he is looking for results at the inbox and compiling a list of people to work with in the future.  This forum is likely one of many contacts the OP has made.  Imagine if you had to visit 20 forums every few days, read everything and respond.

[doc henderson]

survey is supposed to come in June.  too early to tell.  I will give him a chance and I am out nothing.