From August 1999 to spring 2000, Dr.Gero Becker Professor at the Faculty of Forestry of the University of Freiburg (Germany) is working at the College of Forestry of the University of Washington as a Visiting Scholar to conduct research on the interaction between silvicultural treatment and wood quality of Douglas -fir, using quality data of selected SMC installations. Gero Becker received M.Sc.degrees in Forestry in 1971 at the University of Goettingen and in Economy in 1974 at the University of Freiburg. With a dissertation in the field of Forest Utilization, he also got his Ph.D. degree in Freiburg in 1975

. Positions in the State Forest Service and as an Associate Professor at the University of Freiburg followed. In 1987 Becker got full tenure as Professor for Forest Utilization and Wood Products at the University of Goettingen and held this position until 1995, when he took over the same position at the University of Freiburg, where he acts today also as Director of the respective Institute. The main focus of his recent research is the interaction between silviculture and wood quality. For the most important European softwood and hardwood species there have been established correlations between silvicultural treatment, and external (round wood), internal (wood structure) as well as product (boards, veneer) quality parameters. A lot of data obtained from field measurements and through destructive testing of timber and products are available now, and the construction of wood quality related growth models is under way. During the past years Douglas- fir was the main focus of this kind of research, it should be interesting to compare and validate German models with SMC and other NW-American data and results, and vice versa. Gero Becker brought a large dataset with him, containing data of many German Douglas-fir of all age classes and wood quality data of these trees. It will be the objective of the cooperative and research work during the next months to find out if common patterns and structures of the correlations exist and how this could be used for further design of quality-related growth models. To get an impression of the growth conditions and the design of the trials, Gero Becker will accompany measurement activities carried out this fall in selected SMC installations. Gero Becker’s research is supported by the German Volkswagen Foundation. For more information on the Forest Utilization and Wood Products at the University of Goettingen, visit their web site: http:/www.uni-freiburg.de. Throughout the year, Dr. Becker will be giving presentations on Silviculture and Wood Quality.

 

Gero’s e-mail address is: Gero.Becker@t-online.de