Sustainable Forest Biomass: Recycling of Wood Ash
On the 29th of November, Saara Lilja-Rothsten from Tapio Oy and Michael den Herder from the European Forest Institute organised a wood ash recycling workshop together with the Finnish stakeholders. Wood ash is an excellent forest fertilizer - see above photo of granulated wood ash.
Pure wood ash is a natural product and can be very beneficial for forest growth. However, currently this useful side-product (which is often labelled as a waste product) is not used to its full potential.
Wood ash spreading equipment mounted on a forwarder
During the workshop it became obvious that, although there is a lot of knowledge available on wood ash recycling, it doesn’t reach all practitioners. VALERIE aims to address this challenge through improving access to scientific knowledge for foresters, farmers and advisers.
The workshop was one of the first occasions where the ‘virtual adviser’ tool, ask-Valerie.eu, was tested and it was well received by stakeholders. Further testing will take place in early 2017.