Blogging
From Abroad

West Virginia – Wild and Wonderful!

That’s written on the sign at the highway that welcomes people entering the state of the WVU. And whoever created this slogan was right. West Virginia is wild and it is wonderful. This is espacially true when you discover the Cheat Lake for the first time like we did about a week ago!

We rented a canoe from the rec-center including all the gear like PFDs, paddles and straps to mount it on a car. And this for little money! There were just a few other boats on the lake so the water was calm and easy to paddle. And the weather was great (actually, today is the first day since we are here where we experience considerable rain shower – and we are in the states for almost 6 weeks).

Eric provided his car and organized the transportation. And he obviousley liked canoeing, too. A friend of Eric – Brian – accompanied us. But he chose another water-vehicle – his own kayak! Keep on Eskimo-Rollin, Brian!

As mentioned before I was overwhelmed by the landscape and the nature. In Austria it is hard to find a lake, that’s shore isn’t completely covered with private property holiday homes. But here there are a lot of nice places where one can go ashore and enjoy a picnic or whatever.

After we paddled a few miles we found a logging site and we chose to look closer. Due to my profession as a wood science student I was very interested in how logging is done here. And I found a few differences. First, the maximum area of a clear cut in Austria is smaller: just one hectar at a time (afaik – correct me if I’m wrong), so all the logging operations are smaller and hence the machines are smaller.

Second, espacially in the western part of Austria the territory is oftern very steep and alpine. This demands sophisticated stam-transportation-systems like cable-lines. Third, I learned that black locust is not used for any wood-industrial purpose. This is different in Europe. I once did an internship at a company in Hungary that processed black locust. It is mainly used for flooring and sometimes for furniture. I can say, that black locust is my favorite wood species. When you treat is properly (steaming and drying) it gets a very beautiful dark color. And it is the most durable wood growing here.

I take a class at the WVU where we have to develop a business plan. And the black locust logs I saw at our Cheat Lake excursion initiated the idea that one should start to make use of them. My group members liked this idea and so we’re trying to calculate if the utilisation of black locust in West Virginia can be profitable!

Of course there are more differences in forestry between Austria and West Virginia, but the RAMAN-spectroscopy-devis behind me (I’m just sitting in the wood science lab) demands my attention. So if you want to know more about Austrian forests I refer to Eric Jaeschke’s Blog! He wrote a lot of interesting things!