ACEP and ISER Travel to Tanana

ACEP’s Biomass Biomass Coordinator, Amanda Byrd, Director, Gwen Holdmann, and engineering students, Baxter Bond and Alana Vilagi are in the comnunity of Tanana this week.

The ACEP team along with Jen Schmidt of the Instutitute of Social and Economic Research (ISER) are exploring how subsistence wood harvest activities can result in additional socioeconomic benefits as part of a project funded by the National Science Foundation titled Adaptive coupling of human-environmental linkages in response to globally driven changes in subsistance in rural Alaska.

In this visit, the team will hold a community meeting to discuss the project and introduce the Pump Monitoring Aparatus (PuMA) which accurately measures the amount of heating fuel a residence consumes in their Toyo or Monitor stove. The PuMA, or heat meter, will be use in conjuction with wood harvest and wood heating data collected from community members and will attempt to provide the community with information on residential home fuel consumption, and possible ways to save the household on their heating bill.

Photo: Tanana City Manager, Jeff Weltzin, stands by a wood stock pile for the community’s biomass heating systems. Photo by Amanda Byrd/ACEP