Treesearch

Site Index (SI), a key inventory parameter, is traditionally estimated by using costly and laborious field assessments of tree height and age. The increasing availability of reliable information on stand initiation timing and extent of planted, even-aged stands maintained in digital databases suggests that information on the height of dominant trees suffices for assessing SI. Light detection and ranging (LiDAR) is a technology proven capable of providing reliable estimates of tree height even at the individual-tree level. A rigorous evaluation of LiDAR-enabled SI estimation performed on...

We quantified breeding bird abundance, diversity, and indicator species in riparian and upland dry forests along six third- to fourth-order streams on the east slope of the Cascade Range, Washington, USA. Upland mesic forest on southerly aspects was dominated by open ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) and dry Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) plant associations. Upland mesic forest on northerly aspects was dominated by closed-canopy Douglas-fir or dry grand fir (Abies grandis) plant associations. Riparian overstory vegetation was dominated by black cottonwood (Populus trichocarpa) plant...

Pinus chiapensis is a threatened species of pine from southern Mexico and Guatemala. It was first described as a disjunct variety of P. strobus from the eastern United States and Canada. Subsequent morphological work indicates that P. chinpensis is a distinct species, but this interpretation is controversial. To explore the distinctiveness of this taxon, we sequenced three low-copy, unlinked nuclear loci in multiple accessions of P. chiapensis and its three most probable progenitors (P. ayacahuite, P. monticola, and P. strobus). Pinus chiapensis had the lowest combined nucleotide diversity...

To advance the development of conservation planning for rare species with small geographic ranges, we determined habitat associations of Siskiyou Mountains salamanders (Plethodon stormi) and developed habitat suitability models at fine (10 ha), medium (40 ha), and broad (202 ha) spatial scales using available geographic information systems data and logistic regression analysis with an information theoretic approach. Across spatial scales, there was very little support for models with structural habitat features, such as tree canopy cover and conifer diameter. Model-averaged 95-percent...

Understanding the relative importance of landscape history, topography, vegetation, and climate to dead wood patterns is important for assessing pattern-process relationships related to dead wood and associated biodiversity. We sampled dead wood at four topographic positions in two landscapes (1400 to 2100 km2) that experienced different wildfire and salvage histories in coastal Oregon. Study objectives were to (I) determine whether and how the landscapes differed in dead wood amounts and characteristics and (ii) evaluate relationships between dead wood characteristics and potentially...

Ultimately, the quest of ecohydrology (or hydroecology) is to apply fundamental knowledge from hydrology, ecology, atmospheric science, and related disciplines to solve real world problems involving biological systems and hydrologic cycles. Achieving this goal requires sharing information across disciplines, and this chapter is structured toward that end. Our aim is to present current ecological concepts concerning the ways that the structure and function of forest vegetation influence hydrologic processes. To cover this topic in a single chapter, we emphasize some aspects of the interactio...

This paper compares gross differences in rates of bedload sediment moved at bankfull discharges in 19 channels on national forests in the Middle and Southern Rocky Mountains. Each stream has its own "bedload signal," in that the rate and size of materials transported at bankfull discharge largely reflect the nature of flow and sediment particular to that system. However, when rates of bedload transport were normalized by dividing by the watershed area, the results were similar for many sites. Typically, streams exhibited normalized rates of bedload transport between 0.001 and 0.003 kg s-1...

This study surveys 204 consumers and purchasing agents and reports their reaction to terms used to describe forest products from southeast Alaska. Although 67 percent of the respondents would purchase products from old-growth trees, purchasing agents were more likely to refuse to purchase such products (negative response from 12 percent of consumers vs. 29 percent for purchasing agents). Eighty-eight percent of respondents reacted positively to purchasing products from trees grown under sustainable-yield management. Twenty-eight percent of respondents reacted negatively to the term...

Planing and moulding is an important step in the value-added manufacture of wood products, and recent advances in Alaska have been noteworthy. Just a few years ago, most planing occurred on simple shop planers, producing lumber for retail sale or for wood working uses such as cabinet stock. Currently there are at least 26 planers and 13 moulders in-production at Alaskan dry kiln sites (Nicholls et al. 2006), and the expansion of the moulding industry has gone hand-in-hand with that of the dry kiln industry. This number does not include additional machines used by wood working firms that do...

Evidence from over 2,000 water market transactions that occurred in the western U.S. over the past 14 years (1990 through 2003) was examined to learn who is selling to whom and for what purpose, how much water is involved, and how much it is selling for. Roughly half of the transactions were sales of water rights; the rest were water leases. The transactions show that the price of water is highly variable both within and between western states, reflecting the localized nature of the factors that affect water prices. Ideally, if water market prices or valuation studies are to be used to...