Treesearch

U.S. softwood lumber demand is intrinsically linked to residential construction. However, most previous studies have not adequately accounted for this key demand driver when projecting lumber demand. This study links projected housing activity under the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) to softwood lumber demand by explicitly incorporating housing starts into the Forest Resource Outlook Model (FOROM). To support this integration, we first estimate updated demand elasticities using quarterly U.S. data from 2000 to 2024 within an instrumental variables framework. Results show that housing...

The European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) requires plot-level geolocation and full supply chain traceability—requirements that pose distinctive challenges for pellet supply chains where fiber origins cannot be distinguished after blending. We use a dynamic spatial equilibrium model covering fourteen regions to assess how these compliance requirements affect global wood pellet production, prices, and trade from 2026 to 2030. We compare four policy scenarios—EU-only and joint EU-UK implementation, each with static or rising compliance costs—against a no-regulation baseline. Results...

International forest product statistics contain measurement errors, missing values, and trade flow discrepancies. Our study presents a recursive dynamic goal programming approach to identify and reconcile these inconsistencies over the period from 2000 to 2022. Unlike traditional static reconciliation methods, this framework includes year-over-year consistency, optimizing deviations between reported and estimated values while adhering to technological constraints and trade balances. Results indicate substantial regional heterogeneity: Europe and North America exhibit high reported–reconcile...

Forecasting corn yields with precision across diverse weather zones is vital to supporting food supply resilience and sustainable agriculture. We introduce a data-integrated modeling framework applied across the Greater Mississippi River Basin- one of the largest corn-producing regions in the United States. Using MODIS-based NDVI time series, historical meteorological data, and spatial crop coverage, we investigate the relationships between vegetation health indicators and corn yields under varying climatic conditions. A new vegetative metric is introduced to enhance correlation with yield...

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 Tennessee. 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...

Hurricanes are increasingly frequent and intense disturbances that cause substantial economic and ecological damage to forested landscapes worldwide. Following such events, multiple stakeholders – including timberland owners, forest management organizations, logging and transportation providers, and wood-processing mills – face urgent salvage decisions under uncertain and spatially heterogeneous timber supply conditions. This study presents a scenario-based stochastic optimization framework for post-hurricane salvage logging that explicitly accounts for uncertainty in timber volume loss...

Accurately predicting water table dynamics is vital for sustaining groundwater resources, ecological functions, and anthropogenic activities. This study evaluates autoregressive model with a) prediction under sparsity assumption within model coefficients, b) allows lags present in both dependent and independent variables for estimating daily water table depth using hydroclimatic data from the USDA Forest Service Santee Experimental Forest (SC) and D1 (NC). Data from 2006–2019 (SC) and 1988–2008 (NC) were used, with predictors including soil and air temperature, precipitation, wind, and...

We employed the Multiple Indicator-Multiple Causes (MIMIC) model to explore whether the pattern of landowners’ engagement in various information sources and educational activities was influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, making it harder and unsafe to attend mass gatherings. Using data from a 2023 survey of forest landowners in the Southern United States, we found that 51% of respondents were likely to engage in communication networks and educational activi-ties over the next decade. Landowners with larger forest holdings, purchased properties, and the ownership motivation for enjoying...

Forest resources in the eastern US are located on heterogeneous landscapes with widely varying biophysical, social, and market characteristics. As such, the total inventory is rarely available for harvest within a region. Understanding the distinction between physical timber inventory and accessible inventory is crucial for conducting market analyses, developing forward-looking resource assessments, estimating the extractive (“active”) resource base, and, in general, ensuring the continued, sustainable flow of timber. To this end, we employ a mix of regression and spatial analysis to...

Detection of brown spot needle blight (BSNB) disease caused by the fungal pathogen Lecanosticta acicola (Thum.) Syd. has increased significantly at commercial loblolly pine (Pinus taeda L.) plantations across the southeastern United States in recent years. Historically, it has been a serious problem in longleaf pine (Pinus palustris Mill) during the grass stage of seedlings, when the environment is more conducive to fungal infection. However, since 2016, confirmed cases of the disease on loblolly pines have increased in several states, including AL, AR, FL, GA, LA, MS, SC, TN, and TX. We...