The October MMW email udpate included a feature story on carbon credits for forestry. Carbon credits are currently traded on the Chicago Climate Exchange, and standards and criteria are in development. At least for now, growing timber in plantings established after 1990 is eligible for carbon credit trading.
No Minnesota woodland owners (that we know of) are yet receiving carbon credit payments. The system is still in development, and it’s uncertain whether forestry activities will ultimately be eligible.
With that in mind, was this story premature? Maybe. We went with it now because we wanted to make sure that family forest owners and professional foresters in Minnesota are aware of this issue. The potential carbon credit payments are significant - about $12 per acre on average in Minnesota - and this is an important time for interested individuals and organizations to weigh in as standards and criteria are being developed.
We hope the story will encourage action to help ensure that growing wood will be recognized in carbon credit markets for its value in reducing atmospheric carbon and helping to mitigate the impacts of carbon emissions.
You can read the new content at our carbon credits page.
-eli
October 19, 2007
The site was down for a full week early in August. The explanation? A “catastrophic hardware failure” on the Extension server. We apologize for the outage, and hope it didn’t cause too great an inconvenience to site users. To our knowledge, everything was back up and running by about August 8.
August 23, 2007
I’ve had a few inquiries from other Extension website managers about our discussion board. Here’s what I’ve been sending out in response:
We use Website Toolbox for the discussion board platform. It’s relatively cheap and seems to work well. (According to my records a one-year subscription cost us $42.) By far its most important strength is spam control: Knock on wood, we’ve had no spam problems at all in the 4 months or so that it’s been up. That may change (?), but it’s good for now.
Website toolbox is easy to set up and use, but has some limitations. A more expensive product might have more functionality. Some settings that should be modifiable seem hardwired, which at times is annoying. This is a relatively minor thing though, and overall I’m pretty happy with the software.
Discussion board usage has been good. In the first three months after launch, there are 34 threads, averaging about 100 views each. There are a total of about 100 posts, so each thread includes about two replies. There is significant variation by topic.
There’s room for growth, but overall I’ve been pleasantly surprised with this. The discussion board is not meant to be an ask-the-expert thing, it’s supposed to be a forum for discussion. But, in most cases I write the first reply, and I try to do that within 24 hours of the original post. With that in mind, although more questions would be nice, a lot more questions would strain my capacity to address them.
The discussion board is not moderated, so we do not review posts before they appear. They go up as soon as the writer hits “submit.” We do, however, receive email notifications of new posts, and we tend to check them rather frequently.
July 12, 2007
This morning, just before sending out the July MMW update email, I added a Flickr photo badge to the white pine forest type page. The badge randomly calls up 10 images from my Flickr photo library that are tagged with the words “white” and “pine.” The images change with every reload. Clicking an image takes the user to the original Flickr photo page.
I’m not a big fan of bells & whistles, but everybody likes photos. Some of the photos are annotated (when I have time), making them a decent resource for woodland owners.
We’ll see how this goes. I’d appreciate feedback–is this sort of thing a great use of graphics or just clutter?
July 10, 2007
As part of a LCCMR-funded family forest certification project, a brochure was created and mailed to woodland owners in northeastern Minnesota. The brochure directs recipients to MyMinnesotaWoods.org for further information about certification and how they can get involved.
To prepare for these visits, we created a new feature banner on the homepage (click the image for a better view). The feature will run for about two months from the brochure mailing date (apx. June 30). We also significantly added to the site’s forest certification content, expanding from a single page to three: Overview, How to Certify Your Land, and Certification Systems & Standards. (At the time of this writing, some content is still in development for these pages.)
Why the focus on certification? Certification of private woodlands has been a major issue in Minnesota in recent years. Retail markets are increasingly demanding certified forest products. Although most public and industry lands in Minnesota are certified, very little private (non-industrial) land is.
Many factors may explain low woodland owner adoption of certification. Two prominent factors are lack of awareness of certification and confusion about how to get certified. The brochure and associated web content are designed to address these two factors, making more landowners aware of certification and clarifying the processes and options available to certify their land or to hire a certified logger.
Partners in the LCCMR-funded project include the University of Minnesota Extension, the U of M Department of Forest Resources, Dovetail Partners, Minnesota Logger Education Program, Minnesota Forestry Association, and the Blandin Foundation.
June 29, 2007
There have been some surprises in content pageviews. To some degree pageview stats are skewed because some have been featured in email updates and others have not.
Overall, three months after launch, the site averages about 70 visits and 195 pageviews daily.
But: pageview rankings as of three months after launch (excluding homepage and discussion board, and not excluding hits by Eli and Philip):
1. Maps & airphotos: 520 pageviews
2. Directory of professionals: 399 views (dummy page–directory is still in development)
3. Wildlife / overview: 303
4. Small parcels / overview: 259
5. Small parcels / family: 255
6. About the site: 219 (replaced with this blog)
7. Minnesota forest history: 213
8. Wildlife / species: 198
8. Forest / thinning: 198
10: Wildlife / landscape considerations: 191
The main surprise to me is the popularity of the maps & airphotos page. Seeing this and working with the Minnesota Logger Education Program, we added significantly to the content of that page early in June and featured it in the June email update. This page was by far the most popular feature in that email.
No surprise about the high wildlife numbers.
Seeing these stats, we really need to improve the small parcels and forest history (and other) pages. There’s a lot to do.
June 26, 2007
We’ve now sent out two monthly email updates. They go out on the second Tuesday of the month: The first May 10, the second June 12. The email updates are designed to notify site users of new content, draw attention to timely content, and remind people that the site exists.
We didn’t know what to expect (or hope for) for the open or click-through rates. But, we’re pleased so far. Some stats:
May 10: The first update. Sent to 834 recipients. 54 bounces. Opened by 46% of recipients. Of those, 46% followed at least one link.
June 12: Sent to 922, with 16 bounces. Opened by 39%, clicked through by about 47% (as of two weeks after sending).
According to Constant Contact, the “industry-wide” open rate is below 10%. The high open and click rates may reflect curiosity more than anything else. We don’t expect these rates to remain so high.
Onward and upward (?).
-eli
June 26, 2007
The Blandin Foundation’s Vital Forests / Vital Communities initiative launched a new blog today. They’re planning new posts approximately every other week, with content designed to “advance our shared commitment to promoting the connections between a healthy forest-based economy, healthy forest ecosystems and healthy communities.”
Check it out! http://vfvc.wordpress.com/.
-eli
June 15, 2007
We send out an email update on the second Tuesday of the month. The messages currently are sent to just over 900 individuals, mostly Minnesota woodland owners. The email list also includes a number of professional foresters, loggers, and others.
The June update went out as scheduled on Tuesday, June 12. The web version has some formatting problems, so I’ve pasted an image of the message into this post. You can click to see the full-size version.
To receive future emails, visit the homepage and look for the link at lower right.
-eli
June 15, 2007
