Treesearch

Evaluating the cost of fuel treatment operations is an essential aspect for mitigating elevated wildfire risks across western US landscapes. The USDA Forest Service (Forest Service) currently uses a Transaction Evidence Appraisal (TEA) method to appraise stumpage, incorporating key factors such as stump-to-truck processing, slash disposal, transportation, timber markets, and bidder competition. This study aims to improve our understanding of the total costs involved and final advertised rates in fuel treatment operations in Forest Service Regions 2 and 3. Stump-to truck processing and...

Logging businesses in Idaho perform timber harvesting and fuel reduction treatments on the state’s 21.5 million acres of forestland and supply raw material to its $2.5 billion forest products industry which employs more than 30,000 people. We conducted a survey of Idaho logging and forestry contracting businesses during spring and summer of 2025 in cooperation with the Associated Logging Contractors of Idaho (ALC), Inc. to better understand owner and employee demographics, business structure, capital investment, equipment used, and challenges faced.

Pristine crawfish shell waste and shell-derived biochars produced at 500, 650, and 800 ◦C were evaluated as calcium-rich sustainable biosorbents for Nd(III) immobilization from aqueous solution. Batch experiments were conducted at 23 ◦C using 50 mL of 1000 mg L-1 Nd(III) solution and sorbent mass of 25–100 mg to investigate removal behavior, kinetics, and mechanisms. The 800 ◦C biochar exhibited the highest apparent Nd(III) removal capacity (1200 mg g-1), which was attributed to instantaneous alkaline precipitation and the formation of Nd (OH)3. In contrast, pristine crawfish shell and the...

The USDA Forest Service’s Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program, the United States’ national forest inventory operating since 1928, has undergone two independent Blue Ribbon Panel (BRP) reviews (1991–92, 1997–98) that drove major improvements, including the transition toward a nationally consistent annualized inventory system and integration of forest health monitoring. Today, FIA faces unprecedented demands from data-driven markets, intensifying disturbances, supply chain volatility, and sustainability frameworks requiring verified, frequently updated data at sub-county scales...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Forest Service, Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program provides this resource update yearly as an overview of forest resources in Florida. These estimates are derived from field data collected across a systematic network of fixed-radius forest monitoring plots located on both public and private land. New updates are provided annually as a subset of plots within the State are remeasured. Each year, field crews visit and measure a subset of all FIA plots across the entire State (the size of the subset varies by State and year). Combining all...

Global forest ecosystems face growing threats from land use change, climate and weather extremes, and insects and diseases. Managing these threats is difficult due to the time, cost, and human error associated with the quality and quantity of data required for research and assessment. While conventional analytical methods are being improved constantly, they are often slow in providing information needed to respond promptly to unprecedented changes driven by both natural and anthropogenic alterations to forest ecosystems. For this reason, potential applications of artificial intelligence...

Projecting land use transitions onto a wall-to-wall raster requires an initial basemap of land use for the projection period. The 2020 Resources Planning Act (RPA) Assessment includes spatial realizations of county-level land use projections; these realizations are a collection of 90-meter resolution rasters that allocate the county-level projections across the conterminous United States (CONUS). The 2020 basemap is a 90-meter raster depicting land use across the CONUS circa 2020 and is used as the starting position for the spatial realizations. The basemap was created by fusing a modified...

National Forests in the United States provide a broad range of goods and services, safeguard biological diversity, and contribute to the resilience of ecosystems, societies, and economies. Given differences in land use history and forest management approaches between National Forests and neighboring ownerships, we investigated whether they differ across a spectrum of forest health indicators, from biomass stocking to structural diversity to invasion by non-native plants. We used Nationwide Forest Inventory (NFI) plot data from within National Forest System (NFS) lands across the conterminou...

The South’s production of pulpwood decreased from 52.9 million cords in 2023 to 52.1 million cords in 2024. Roundwood production remained constant at 38.2 million cords and accounted for 73 percent of the South’s total pulpwood production. The use of wood residue decreased 5 percent to 13.9 million cords in 2024. Alabama and Georgia led the South in total production, with 9.1 and 8.7 million cords, respectively. In 2024, 66 mills were operating and drawing wood from the 13 Southern States.

Developing interest in using silviculture to achieve a broad array of objectives such as maintaining or restoring ecological function, increasing adaptive capacity, and providing timber products in the same forest stand has increased the appeal of irregular shelterwood methods. Despite growing application in Canada, Europe, and other regions of the United States, use of irregular shelterwood is limited across the Central Hardwood Forest Region, USA. Obstacles to broader implementation include a need for intermediate treatments to address existing challenges to oak regeneration, unfamiliarit...