Treesearch

Trials of fire line establishment with a mulcher were conducted with a 261 kW Caterpillar 586C site prep tractor and Cat HM825 mulcher head (2.5 m cutting path). The fire lines were intended for the application of prescribed fire. The trials were on three sites and in two stand types (cutover and thinned pine), and at three production speeds (0.6, 0.8, and 1.2 km/h). The slowest speed (0.6) was a two-pass application at 1.2 km/h. Treatments were applied in 16 blocks to 48 segments which ranged from 100 to 300 m in length. Mineral soil exposure ranged from 50% to 80% of the treatment width...

Bark beetle (Coleoptera: Curculionidae, sf. Scolytinae) infestations modify fuels and, consequently, modeled fire behavior in conifer ecosystems of the Western United States (Hicke and others 2012, Jenkins and others 2014). Changes in fuels will vary with space and time since infestation, and impacts on fire behavior will be correspondingly complex (Simard and others 2011). Multiple studies have focused on quantifying fuels and modeled or observed fire behavior in currently infested (known as “red-stage” because killed trees still retain fading yellow-red needles) and recently infested...

The "Great Acceleration" is upon us, an era of rapid and transformative change (Steffen et al. 2015). According to some observers, we have reached a historic inflection point in which multiple mega-trends—such as technological disruption, economic globalization, and climate change—are accelerating and interacting at the same time. Rapid social, technological, environmental, economic, and political change is the broad context for arboriculture in the 21st century. The recent past and business-as-usual thinking may not be good guides for navigating this turbulent future. Faced with rapid,...

These proceedings contain the full-length papers, extended abstracts, and research abstracts of oral presentations and posters given at the Sixth Interagency Conference on Research in the Watersheds (ICRW)—Working Watersheds and Coastal Systems: Research and Management for a Changing Future, held at the National Conservation Training Center, Shepherdstown, WV, July 23-26, 2018. The Sixth ICRW focused on “working watersheds.” These so-called watersheds and coastal systems provide a wide array of useful economic goods and services (e.g., agricultural products, urban development, recreation,...

Tree mortality is a natural process in all forest ecosystems. However, extremely high mortality can be an indicator of forest health issues. On a regional scale, high mortality levels may indicate widespread insect or disease problems. High mortality may also occur if a large proportion of the forest in a particular region is made up of older, senescent stands.

This chapter summarizes temporal trends in forest fragmentation for the conterminous United States from 2001 to 2011. As distinguished from forest loss per se, forest fragmentation refers broadly to the subdivision of the remaining forest into smaller parcels, the creation of more forest edge per unit of forest area, and the increased distance between the remaining forest parcels. The processes of forest disturbance and recovery, both natural and anthropogenic, together determine the trends of forest fragmentation geographically and over time. The impacts of forest fragmentation on...

A new, late-season leaf disease on bur oak (Quercus macrocarpa) had been observed in southern Minnesota, southwest Wisconsin, eastern Nebraska, and Iowa since the mid-1990s. Symptoms of the new disease included necrosis of the leaf tissue along the veins and death of entire leaves, usually starting in late July (Pokorny and Harrington 2011). Branches in the lower crown were generally the most severely affected, and severity of the disease tended to increase year to year in individual trees. Distinctive fruiting bodies (conidiomata) of a fungus were found along the veins of affected leaves,...

Beech bark disease (BBD) is an exotic insect and disease complex that results from the interaction of the exotic beech scale insect, Cryptococcus fagisuga Lind., and at least two species of fungi in the genus Neonectria(Ehrlich 1934, Lohman and Watson 1943, Spaulding and others 1936). Impacted forests suffer high mortality of American beech (Fagus grandifolia), in some cases within a few years of first detection. American beech is an important component of many forests in Wisconsin, in particular along Lake Michigan where tourism is economically important, and in parts of the Menominee...

The annual national report of the Forest Health Monitoring (FHM) program of the Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, presents forest health status and trends from a national or multi-State regional perspective using a variety of sources, introduces new techniques for analyzing forest health data, and summarizes results of recently completed Evaluation Monitoring projects funded through the FHM national program. In this 18th edition in a series of annual reports, national survey data are used to identify geographic patterns of insect and disease activity. Satellite data are...