Treesearch

Wildfires represent major ecological disturbances, burning 2–3% of Earth’s terrestrial area each year with sometimes drastic effects above and belowground. Soil bacteria offer an ideal, yet understudied system within which to explore fundamental principles of fire ecology. To understand how wildfires restructure soil bacterial communities and alter their functioning, we sought to translate aboveground fire ecology to belowground systems by determining which microbial traits are important post-fire and whether changes in bacterial communities affect carbon cycling. We employed an uncommon...

Due to the increasingly widespread water pollutants and the high cost of treatment methods, there is a demand for new, inexpensive, renewable, and biodegradable adsorbent materials for the purification of wastewater contaminants. In this study, a new biocomposite aerogel (Amf-CNF/LS) was prepared using a chemically cross-linking method between the amino-functionalized cellulose nanofibers (Amf-CNF) and lignosulfonates (LS). The physical and chemical properties of the prepared aerogel were investigated using several techniques including elemental analysis, scanning electron microscopy...

Lignin is an abundant and complex plant polymer that may limit litter decomposition, yet lignin is sometimes a minor constituent of soil organic carbon (SOC). Accounting for diversity in soil characteristics might reconcile this apparent contradiction. Tracking decomposition of a lignin/litter mixture and SOC across different North American mineral soils using lab and field incubations, here we show that cumulative lignin decomposition varies 18-fold among soils and is strongly correlated with bulk litter decomposition, but not SOC decomposition. Climate legacy predicts decomposition in...

Round timber and wood products are measured, sorted, and graded at different stages in the wood-value chain starting already at the stem level in the forest. This chapter gives an overview of grading methodologies and techhniques for the measurement and grading of round timber, sawn timber, veneer, and wood-panel products. The section concerning round timber focuses on the grading and sorting of logs for sawmill and veneer production. For sawn timber, visual and strength grading are discussed, for both the European and the North American markets. Techniques for measurement and process...

The career of Sherwin J. Carlquist was marked by numerous pioneering contributions to botany and especially to ecological and evolutionary wood anatomy. He developed some of the most important modern functional hypotheses for wood, including postulating a biomechanical and fluid dynamic role for helical thickenings (HT) in seasonally dry environments. Here we endeavor to honor Carlquist’s legacy by summarizing existing observations, explicitly acknowledging that HT represent a range of non-homologous and likely functionally disparate features, and exploring HT functional hypotheses in...

Previous studies on computer vision wood identification (CVWID) have assumed or implied that the quality of sanding or knifing preparation of the transverse surface of wood specimens could influence model performance, but its impact is unknown and largely unexplored. This study investigates how variations in surface preparation quality of test specimens could affect the predictive accuracy of a previously published 24-class XyloTron CVWID model for Peruvian timbers. The model was trained on images of Peruvian wood specimens prepared at 1500 sanding grit and tested on images of independent...

Bamboo composite is an attractive candidate for structural materials in applications such as construction, the automotive industry, and logistics. However, its development has been hindered due to the use of harmful petroleum-derived synthetic adhesives or low-bonding biobased adhesives. Herein, we report a novel bioadhesion strategy based on in situ lignin bonding that can process natural bamboo into a scalable and high-performance composite. In this process, lignin bonds the cellulose fibrils into a strong network via a superstrong adhesive interface formed by hydrogen bonding and...

Rosewood and palisander (Dalbergia L.f., Fabaceae) are sources of highly valuable tropical timber and include species threatened by habitat degradation and selective logging for national and international trade. Law enforcement depends on reliable and cost-effective species-level identification of timber along the supply chain. The potential of wood anatomy to distinguish between species has not yet been systematically investigated for Dalbergia species from Madagascar. We assessed 36 qualitative and eight quantitative wood anatomical features in 16 Malagasy Dalbergia species that form...

Eighty-eight of the 255 Diospyros species from Madagascar are potential sources of ebony wood. Unfortunately, several species are currently threatened with extinction due in part to illegal and unsustainable logging. Reliable identification of living Diospyros species is necessary prior to any sustainable exploitation, so as not to compromise those species threatened with extinction. This study aims to identify features that might contribute to supporting taxonomic studies and to provide a complementary tool for the identification of standing trees. Fifteen species of Diospyros endemic to...

The effectiveness of physical barriers against subterranean termites was evaluated in a 34-wk field test in coastal Mississippi by installing Obex11, a commercial polyethylene flashing, and Termimesh, a stainless-steel mesh in 3-ply 280 mm (width) × 450 mm (length) cross laminated timber (CLT) walls. Damage showed that both barriers performed significantly better than the no barrier control with respect to termite damage as evaluated by visual rating and mud tube length. Obex11, however, like the no barrier control, was more vulnerable to attack by Ambrosiodmus minor (Stebbing), an...