Treesearch

Cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) are renewable, high-value nanomaterials with broad industrial applications. Based on laboratory-scale experimental data, this study demonstrates the feasibility of utilizing sugar maple forest residues for 10 metric tons per day (MTPD) production of CNC through an integrated techno-economic analysis (TEA) and life cycle assessment (LCA). The minimum selling price (MSP) of CNC was estimated at $16.03/kg, with a global warming (GW) impact of 28.60 kg CO₂ eq/kg CNC. Sensitivity analysis identified CNC yield and pretreatment solids loading as key drivers for the...

Growing concerns about global warming from fossil fuel combustion underscore the need for sustainable hydrogen production. Catalytic methane decomposition (CMD) offers a CO2-free pathway by generating hydrogen and solid carbon. This study performs a cradle-to-gate life-cycle assessment of CMD using two catalytic systems, including Ni/Al2O3 (metal-based) and biochar (renewable carbon-based), for producing 1 kg H2 under physical and economic allocation approaches. The physical allocation results demonstrated biochar’s superior environmental performance, with 26% lower fossil fuel depletion...

Carbon fibres (CFs) are indispensable for lightweight structural engineering, yet their widespread adoption is stifled by the high cost and environmental toll of polyacrylonitrile (PAN) precursors. While substituting PAN with low-footprint alternatives such as lignin or carbon black reduces emissions, the resulting fibres typically suffer from mechanical degradation caused by poorly integrated fillers. Here we report an electrified carbon-fibre upgrading strategy that transforms low-cost, carbon-black-loaded PAN precursors into high-performance CFs by incorporating methane (CH4)-derived...

Urban sustainability systems, including green, blue, and grey infrastructures and spaces, require ongoing coordination, collaboration, and comanagement in order to function. Municipal agencies often do not have the resources to maintain these systems alone and rely on a network of civic organisations and volunteers as well as job trainees, temporary employees, and welfare- to- work staff, alongside permanent public employees (Krinsky and Simonet, 2017). Civic groups, however, are more than just a labour force; they envision and shape the public realm in their own right. The majority of...

Wood is preferred as a building material due to its high strength, low weight, and ability to retain many of its properties even at moderately high temperatures. However, numerous wood adhesives lose strength as the temperature increases, especially around 200°C. This study examined bond strength at temperatures above that required for initiation of wood degradation for bonds of wood-to-wood and wood-to-aluminum using two oil-based adhesives (resole phenolics and epoxies) and two bio-based adhesives (soy protein isolate and ovalbumin from egg whites). The phenolics not only gave the best...

Proteins were useful as adhesives for wood bonding, including those derived from animals (collagen, casein, ovalbumin, and blood), and plants (soy, canola, and cottonseed). These proteins have different structures that dictate their wood adhesive performance. Hydrolyzed collagens from animal hides and bones are hot-melt adhesives suitable for paper applications with durability improved by crosslinking. Soy flour adhesives, even with a crosslinker, are amphiphilic, giving moderate wet-strength wood bonds, while with ovalbumin (egg whites) curing exposes hydrophobic surfaces leading to high...

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...

Widespread mortality poses a major conservation challenge for foundation species whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis Engelm.). We assessed whitebark pine forest structure, composition, and persistence potential in Idaho and Nevada, USA following mountain pine beetle (MPB), wildfire, and no recent disturbance by comparing overstory and regeneration relative abundances, classifying postdisturbance communities, and gauging persistence via residual mature trees and seedlings. Wildfire mortality spanned all species and sizes and exceeded MPB mortality, which was limited to larger pines. Disturbance...

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...

A 2021 analysis of the urban forest in Minneapolis, Minnesota reveals that this area has an estimated 1.8 million live trees across all ownerships. The most common large diameter (11.0+ inches) tree species are hackberry, American elm, silver maple, bur oak, and honeylocust. Trees in Minneapolis are estimated to be currently storing about 228,000 tons of carbon (837,000 tons of carbon dioxide [CO2]) valued at $38.9 million. In addition, it is estimated that these trees annually remove about 26,000 tons of CO2 and about 774 tons of air pollution. Minneapolis’ urban forest is estimated to...