| Research Leader
named at Homer Hill Farm Station Dr. Michael Blazier, the recently appointed Forestry Research Project Leader at the Hill Farm Research Station at Homer, will be speaking at several North Louisiana locations during the month of September, according to Eddie White, County Agent for Jackson Parish with the LSU AgCenter. The new Research Leader succeeds Dr. Terry Clason at the Homer post. Dr. Clason retired last year, and now works as a consultant in forestry with the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service. "Dr. Blazier is a Louisiana native, born and raised in West Monroe," said White. "As such, it is with a sense of responsibility and pride that he strives to develop new information that will benefit the many private forest owners of this state, from small acreage owner to the large industrial owner." Dr. Blazier, in his new position at Hill Farm Research Station, plans to help private forest owners of Louisiana meet their diverse management objectives. In years ahead, forestry research at the Hill Farm will explore sustainable timber and fiber production, cattle\\timber production, timber\\annual crop production, wildlife management and forest recreation issues. Dr. Blazier's experience and education focused heavily on researching the needs of forest managers in this region. He received a Bachelor of Science in forest management at Louisiana Tech University in 1997. From there he moved to Oklahoma State University for graduate studies. To earn the Master of Science degree in forest ecophysiology, he conducted research to find the best growing families of loblolly pine to plant in southeast Oklahoma. In order to complete this study, Dr. Blazier measured tree bio-mass, photosynthesis rates, and water use efficiencies. In earning his Doctor of Philosophy degree in forest nutrition, Dr. Blazier carried out studies on identifying the optimum conditions in which fertilizer should be applied to loblolly pines in response to different dates of fertilizer application. He also studied the effects of understory vegetation and microbial populations on loblolly pine fertilizer uptake efficiency. In that study, Dr. Blazier discovered that it's possible to double the amount of fertilizer gotten into trees simply by applying fertilizer in later summer or early fall instead of the late winter early spring period usually utilized. In his presentation, Dr. Blazier will discuss the pressing issues forest owners face currently, share some research results from his own work and that of the Hill Farm station and outline some forestry research that will be produced in the future at Hill Farm. All forest landowners and anyone with an interest in
the forest industry are invited to meet and interact with
Dr. Michael Blazier at the following scheduled meetings: |