Josiah to Speak on Nebraska's forests through time

Scott Josiah, Nebraska State Forester
Scott Josiah, Nebraska State Forester

Scott Josiah, Nebraska State Forester and director of the Nebraska Forest Service, will present "Fire, Floods and Bugs: Nebraska's Forests - Past, Present and Future" on Wednesday, April 25, at 2 p.m. in 901 Hardin Hall, as a Geography general seminar.

Josiah has 34 years of experience in forestry, agroforestry, containerized nursery management and wildland fire, both in the U.S. and in tropical developing countries. He received a B.S. in forestry from the New York State College of Environmental Science and Forestry, earned an M.S. in soils and botany from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, and has a Ph.D. in forest policy and administration from the University of Minnesota.

Josiah worked as a forester on private lands in New York and spent four years serving as fire protection forester for the U.S. Territory of Guam.

Before moving to the upper Midwest in 1992, he worked in Haiti for five years, first running a commercial tree nursery and then managing a network of 30 regional containerized nurseries that produced 7 million tropical hardwood seedlings each year. He ultimately became assistant director for a national agroforestry project in Haiti, where he was responsible for the technical activities of 1,100 extension and technical staff who promoted agroforestry systems.

Josiah joined the faculty of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln in 1998 as extension forester, directing research and education programs in specialty woody crops production and marketing, community forestry and agroforestry. He has been serving as state forester and director of the Nebraska Forest Service since 2005, administering a suite of programs addressing the forestry needs in this Great Plains state.