Emphasis in the hardwood industry is shifting away from structural-grade timber toward the production of high-value products. Many dense hardwoods are extremely difficult to dry without causing defects such as: splitting, warping, twisting, and collapse. Solar power is a convenient and cheap energy source that can be easily applied to timber drying. It greatly improves wood quality and reduces timber drying costs by 50% or more compared with conventional drying kilns; however solar kilns are still slow and powerless to manipulate the density and moisture permeability of wood. A thorough...

Landscape managers are required to make decisions within complex environments. Clearly many of these decisions demand a reasonable knowledge of many technologies including power systems, machinery, post harvest technologies, geographic information systems, remote sensing and automatic data acquisition systems that are available to the modern landscape manager. On the other hand, engineers must synthesis and apply a vast array of higher order sciences for the benefit of society and the environment. This book is not meant to be an engineering text book, neither is it comprehensive in its...