Treesearch

Integrating what we know about growing trees with what we know about harvesting them can increase the economic availability of wood fiber and add value to future crops. Results for the oak/hickory forest type in West Virginia show that up to 1,736.61 ft³/ac. of wood fiber can be harvested 10 years sooner than usual by simply matching the size of the machine to the size of the wood harvested. Specifically, the study focused on the gains that can be made by matching the size of machines to size of the wood harvested, by utilizing harvesting machines better and more efficiently, and by...

Because increasing demands are being placed on industry to harvest timber by aesthetically, economically, and ecologically acceptable means, we investigated the effects of a ground-based group selection harvest on logging productivity. Results show that size of opening had little or no effect on skidding productivity. However, significant skidder operator differences existed. Some skidder operators consistently, in shorter periods of time, loaded their machine with larger payloads resulting in larger turn volumes. Group selection unit size, skidder operator, and utilization level had no...

The true cedars (genus Cedrus) are valuable timber trees and striking specimen plantings in the urban landscape that grow well in a variety of soil and climatic conditions. The wood is durable and decay resistant. Cedars have been successfully introduced into areas outside of their natural range. The 4 species of Cedrus, 3 of which are planted to some extent in the United States, are C. atlantica (Atlas cedar), C. brevifolia (Cyprian cedar), C. deodara (Deodar cedar), and C. libani (Cedar of Lebanon). In this review, the geographical distribution, taxonomic characteristics, propagation,...

Oak wilt, caused by the fungus Ceratocystis fagacearum {Bretz} Hunt, is an important disease of oaks (Quercus spp.) in the eastern United States. the disease occurs in 22 states and is considered the most important forest disease problem in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Texas and Wisconsin. The pathogen causes mortality of thousands of native oaks annually in urban and natural forests in the north-central United States and in Texas.

The forestry profession has no offical policy on forest aesthetics: Neither foresters nor the public have clear guidelines as to what a socially acceptable, actively managed forest should lookl ike. Hints of an impplicit policy can be found in the Society of American Foresters (SAF) position statements on timber harvesting and in various recommendations for best management practices found in state, federal, and industrial forestry publications. These implicit policies may send a hypocritical message to the public about the practice, intent, and ethics of forestry.

When unlogged, mesic forest of the Great lakes region of North America are "slow systems' dominant trees can live for over 300 years and canopy-residence times range from 100 to over 200 years (frelich & Lorimer 1991: Frelich & Graumlich 1994: parshall 1995: Dahir & Lorimer 1996: Woods 2000). Catastrophic wind-throw caused by tornadoes and derecho events may be the most important standing-initiating disturbances in mesic stands but return times for such occurrences appear to exceed a millennium (lorimer 1977: Canham & Loucks 1984: Whitney 1990: Seischab & Orwig 19910. It is therefore...

Home range size of six swamp rabbits in south-central Arkansas was estilnated by radio-telemetry from February 1991 through March 1992. The average home range size was significantly larger than previously reported estimates. This difference is partly attributable to the large number of observations per rabbit in our study, but may also be explained by our inclusion of numerous locations of swamp rabbits during periods of deep inundation. All of the individual rabbits tracked used different areas when the study site was flooded. These results provide the first quantitative description of...

In 1997, the USDA Forest Service, & Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) Program at the North Central Research Station in St. Paul, Minnesota contacted approximately 3,000 private forest landowners in Wisconsin as part of acomprehensive statewide survey. FIA routinely collects and analyzes forest resources data.

Oak savannas, woodlands and forests were dominant ecosystems throughout the central hardwood Region (CHR) before European settlement. Today, only 0.02 percent of the original oak savannas present at the time of European settlement remain, and bottomland hardwood forests have been reduced by 70 to 95 percent depending on the watershed (Nuzzo 1986, Sharitz and Mitsch 1993). This deforestation resulted largely from agriculture development.

In January 1989, the President's Fiscal Year 1990 Budget to the Congress was accompanied by a report entitled, "Our Changing Planet: A U.S. Strategy for Global Change Research" (Committee on Earth Sciences, 1989). The report focused the attention of policy makers on the significant environmental issues arising from natural and human-induced changes in the global Earth system. The report announced the beginning of a research program, the U.S. Global Change Research Program, with a mission to improve our understanding of the causes, processes, and consequences of the changes affecting our...