Treesearch

A collection of case studies, interviews, and personal reflections inspired by a national workshop, Green Readiness, Response, and Recovery: A Collaborative Synthesis includes lessons learned from a diverse group of practitioners and researchers about the ways in which environmental stewardship has served as a catalyst for revitalizing communities. Its focus is on practical solutions from various sectors on how to best prepare for, respond to, and recover from disturbances. The book contains a wide range of examples, including social and environmental disturbances and disasters, urban and...

As highly productive and biologically diverse communities, healthy quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides; hereafter aspen) forests provide a wide range of ecosystem services across western North America. Western aspen decline during the last century has been attributed to several causes and their interactions, including altered fire regimes, drought, excessive use by domestic and wild ungulates, and conifer encroachment. Today’s managers need science-based guidance to develop and implement strategies and practices to restore structure, processes, and resilience to the full range of aspen...

The USDA Forest Service was created in 1905 with a mission that continues to resonate and inspire our work today: "To sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the Nation's forests and grasslands to meet the needs of present and future generations." Our emphasis on both land and people is summarized in our motto, "Caring for the land and serving people," in recognition of our civic service, the fundamental importance of nature to human health and well-being, and our desire to awaken and strengthen all people's connection to the land. "Caring for the land" represents our commitment...

Over the past 150 years, a blink of an eye in terms of human history, our experiences in relation to nature have changed radically in much of the world. Dramatic migration to cities—coupled with urban planning and design that emphasized gray over green infrastructure, inequality, and perhaps an overvaluing of technology—has led many people to be divorced from nature, with little access to nature’s social and ecological benefits. At the same time, stress levels are rising. Though medicine has made incredible advances in recent decades, life spans that had for many years been lengthening are...

Maize (Zea mays mays) oil is a rich source of polyunsaturated fatty acids (FAs) and energy, making it a valuable resource for human food, animal feed, and bio-energy. Although this trait has been studied via conventional genome-wide association study (GWAS), the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP)-trait associations generated by GWAS may miss the underlying associations when traits are based on many genes, each with small effects that can be overshadowed by genetic background and environmental variation. Detecting these SNPs statistically is also limited by the levels set for false...

Forest canopy water use and carbon cycling traits (WCT) can vary substantially and in spatially organized patterns, with significant impacts on watershed ecohydrology. In many watersheds, WCT may vary systematically along and between hydrologic flowpaths as an adaptation to available soil water, nutrients, and microclimate-mediated atmospheric water demand. We hypothesize that the emerging patterns of WCT at the hillslope to catchment scale provide a more resistant ecohydrological system, particularly with respect to drought stress, and the maintenance of high levels of productivity....

Attitudes toward public forest management actions can be sources of conflict among and between public stakeholders and managers. Understanding these forest stakeholders can help managers engage in planning processes more effectively. Residents of fifteen counties in Wisconsin were surveyed in summer 2013 to understand how management attitudes impacted respondents' acceptance of management at three levels of publicly managed forest: county, state, and national. Results from regression models reveal that similar attitudes consistently impacted stakeholders' acceptance of fire, timber,...

To meet newer environmental standards, modified plant proteins have been studied as no-added formaldehyde wood adhesives for interior applications. Many methods have been developed to increase the wet strength of wood products bonded with soy adhesives. These methods involve modifying the soy in separate steps prior to formulating the adhesive or adding a polymerizable co-reactant to the soy. We show that adding periodate, permanganate, or iodate to soy flour improved the strength of soy adhesive bonds in small-scale testing and in plywood shear, especially when tested under wet conditions....

Recently, measured flame spread indices on commercial wood species tested per ASTM E84 were found to be lower than previously published data. One reason for this may be that the hygrothermal conditioning of the red oak calibrant required by the test standards for measuring flame spread was changed between 1973 and 1981. This paper examines how much variability there is in the moisture content of commercially important wood species at 50% relative humidity by collecting water vapor sorption isotherms. Additionally, the effect of moisture content on the flame spread was evaluated after...

This article reports on the development of accelerated laboratory methods to allow estimation of preservative leaching frompressure-treated wood exposed to precipitation. End-matched lumber specimens were pressure-treated with a boron–copper formulation and exposed to natural weathering for 1 yr, laboratory immersion protocols, or a laboratory-simulated rainfall protocol. The rainfall runoff or immersion water was collected at intervals according to the method used and analyzed for concentrations of copper and boron. Of the laboratory methods evaluated, the simulated rainfall approach...