Treesearch

Aerial counts, in-person interviews, and mail-in questionnaires were used to survey sport fish use during the coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch Walbaum) season on the Copper River Delta, Alaska from 2002 through 2006. Angler counts provided an index of use on individual streams and were used to develop a spatial database exhibiting patterns of use. In-person interviews and mail-in questionnaires were used to determine the effort, catch, and harvest of coho salmon by both local residents of Cordova and nonresident anglers. The estimated annual effort for nonresidents ranged from 5,230 to...

Woody biomass can be used for the generation of heat, electricity, and biofuels. In many cases, the technology for converting woody biomass into energy has been established for decades, but because the price of woody biomass energy has not been competitive with traditional fossil fuels, bioenergy production from woody biomass has not been widely adopted. However, current projections of future energy use and renewable energy and climate change legislation under consideration suggest increased use of both forest and agriculture biomass energy in the coming decades. This report provides a...

This study updates an earlier assessment of the past, current, and prospective situation for the Nation’s land base. We describe area changes among major land uses on the U.S. land base for historical trends from 1982 to 2002 and projections out to 2062. Historically, 11 million acres of forest, cropland, and open space were converted to urban and other developed uses from 1992 to 1997 on nonfederal land in the contiguous United States. The national rate of urbanization increased notably compared to the 1982-92 period. The largest percentage increase was in urban use, which grew by 10...

Increasing concern over the management and harvest of special forest products (SFP) from national forest lands has led to the development of new Forest Service policy directives. In this paper, we present a brief history of SFPs in the Western United States, highlighting the issues that necessitated new management direction. The new policy directives that led to the development of a cost appraisal system for SFPs are discussed. The framework, components, and uses of this cost appraisal system are described in detail. An informal assessment of the impact, effectiveness, and value of the...

New methods for predictive vegetation mapping allow improved estimations of plant community composition across large regions. Random Forest (RF) models limit over-fitting problems of other methods, and are known for making accurate classification predictions from noisy, nonnormal data, but can be biased when plot samples are unbalanced. We developed two contrasting maps of forested ecological systems in the western Oregon Cascades ecoregion based on (a) RF and (b) RF with a bias adjustment. The methods had similar overall accuracy but different strengths and weaknesses. Both methods...

Timber availability, aboveground tree biomass, and changes in aboveground carbon pools are important consequences of landscape management. There are several models available for calculating tree volume and aboveground tree biomass pools. This paper documents species-specific regional equations for tree volume and aboveground live tree biomass estimation that might be used to examine consequences of midscale landscape management in the Pacific Northwest. These regional equations were applied to a landscape in the upper Deschutes study area in central Oregon. We demonstrate an analysis of...

New research initiatives focusing on urban ecology and natural resources are underway. Such programs coincide with increased local government action in urban forest planning and management, activities that are enhanced by scientific knowledge. This project used a participatory stakeholder process to explore and understand urban forestry research and technology transfer needs in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. The approach can be readily used for any geographic region or metropolitan area. A two-phase, abbreviated Delphi process was conducted, inviting input from urban...

Stomatal responses to leaf-to-air vapour pressure deficit (LVPD), leaf water potential components, and cuticular properties were characterized for Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) foliage collected from treetops along a height gradient from 5 m to 58 m in order to explore height-related trends in stomatal sensitivity to LVPD and to investigate the role of bulk leaf turgor and leaf cuticle thickness in determining stomatal behaviour. There were three distinct phases in the response of stomatal conductance (gs) to changes in LVPD. At low LVPD, gs increased with increasing LVPD (phase...

Western United States land managers are conducting fuel reduction and forest restoration treatments in forests with altered structural conditions. As part of the National Fire and Fire Surrogate (FFS) study, thinning and burning treatments were evaluated for changing forest structure. Shifts between pretreatment and posttreatment diameter distributions at seven western FFS study sites were determined by assessing live tree diameter frequency distributions and the 10th and 90th percentile and mean diameter. Diameter distributions were based on 31,517 live trees within 76 pretreatment units...

We needed a reliable way to identify species and confirm potential interspecific and intergeneric hybrids in a landscape-level study of gene flow from transgenic gylphosate-resistant Agrostis stolonifera (Poaceae) to compatible relatives. We developed 12 new polymorphic chloroplast microsatellite markers to aid in identifying species recipient of transgenic pollen both within the Agrostis complex and the related genera Polypogon.