Friday July 3, 2009
  
 
 

The USDA Special Grant program for Wood Utilization Research (WUR) is authorized and funded by Congress to stimulate innovation and the generation of new knowledge and technologies that are necessary to balance the sustainable use of U.S. forest resources with the need to maintain a vigorous, globally competitive domestic forest products industry. There are three primary national goals for the WUR program:
WUR Center Locations across the U.S.
  • Enhance the global competitiveness of the American wood products industry and strengthen rural vitality.
  • Utilize wood to advance energy independence and environmental stewardship.
  • Enable sustainability through socially and environmentally acceptable production and consumption of wood products.
The WUR program currently supports research and outreach through 13 university partners at 11 Centers distributed across the country. Jointly, the WUR Centers address the major problems confronting the domestic forest products manufacturing industry in all of the forest regions of the U.S. Funding of the WUR program has enabled the nation's wood industry to advance
technologically and, in general, position universities to help an industry with limited ability or resources to help themselves.
  • The effectiveness of the Centers for Wood Utilization Research is evidenced both in the economic benefits of the research and the Centers’ success in promoting more efficient utilization and stewardship of our nation’s forest resources.
  • The program has been reviewed by USDA and was found to be highly productive and is successful with accomplishing its mission.
  • All Center funds are allocated though a peer review process, and highly leverage other investments by industry, state and university sources.

See National WUR Strategic Plan

Click to Download the National WUR Strategic Plan

     See WUR Information Sheet  HTML  PDF

Click to View the WUR Information Sheet

Click here for the GAO report.

Click here for WUR dollar leverage.

Contact Information
Professor Barry Goodell, National Coordinator - WUR Centers
5755 Nutting Hall, University of Maine, Orono, Maine 04469
Phone: (207) 581-2888      Email: goodell@umit.maine.edu