Treesearch

Understanding landowner motivations and barriers is critical to the success of conservation programs. In 2020, we conducted a survey of family forest owners in Vermont related to expert visits, patch cuts, and applying for cost-share funds. We analyzed the activities using the Transtheoretical Model of Behavioral Change (TTM) and ordinal logistic regression. The TTM stage of change varied by activity with 68% of the respondents being in the Action stage for expert visits, 29% being in the Action stage for patch cuts, and 14% being in the Action stage for cost-share. The significant...

State preferential forest property tax programs (PFPTP) are commonly used to incentivize landowners to keep their land in a forested condition. For those PFPTPs that offer multiple enrollment periods, an important decision landowners face is the length of time they commit their land to the program, especially if the program's financial benefits are linked to the length of time enrolled. This study explores what factors influence the program length commitment decisions forest landowners make when choosing to participate in a PFPTP that offers multiple commitment lengths and associated...

Evaluation Monitoring (EM) projects are funded by the Forest Health Monitoring (FHM) Program annually and are intended to determine the extent, severity, and causes of changes in forest health identified through Detection Monitoring. The EM project proposals are submitted, reviewed, and selected through a process established by the FHM Management Team. Each year, the FHM Management Team reviews the EM proposal guidelines, application instructions, and priorities, culminating in updated proposal instructions and guidelines, new project proposal form, and progress and final reporting...

This study focused on an outbreak of D. sapinea and Diplodia scrobiculata, which caused extensive dieback and mortality of slash pines (Pinus elliottii) along a highway in central Florida starting in 2012. The presence of an unusually large and uniform outbreak led to concern about what factors were responsible in the development of the outbreak. The objectives of this study were to (1) examine the effect of nutrients in this outbreak and (2) investigate the role of nitrogen in disease severity using inoculated saplings.

The objectives of this study were (1) to understand the increasing flowering dogwood mortality and population decline in the Southeastern United States over the past few decades; (2) to identify the predisposing, inciting, and contributing factors that could be leading to a decline complex; and (3) to investigate interactions between the identified factors based on Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) data and site-specific field survey observations. Findings from the study could facilitate future development of flowering dogwood decline risk assessment tools to assist land managers with...

National Forest Inventories (NFIs) provide statistically reliable information on forest resources at national and other large spatial scales. As forest management and conservation needs become increasingly complex, NFIs are being called upon to provide forest parameter estimates at spatial scales smaller than current design-based estimation procedures can provide. This is particularly true when estimates are desired by species or species groups, which is often required to inform wildlife habitat management, sustainable forestry certifications, or timber product assessments. Here we propose...

Invasive plants often can self‐pollinate and have higher reproductive outputs than native counterparts. Pollinator declines may exacerbate disparities in reproductive output by negatively impacting native plants more than invasives.To determine how pollinator availability affects reproductive success of two species (one native, one invasive), we conducted a pollinator exclusion experiment for two functionally similar species: the invasive musk thistle Carduus nutans and native field thistle Cirsium discolour. We manipulated pollinator access to flowers by partially or completely excluding...

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 Iowa. 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 the...

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 Idaho. 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 the...

This paper quantifies how softwood lumber tariffs propagate through the U.S. economy to affect homebuyers’ monthly mortgage payments, comparing this channel to direct mortgage rate changes. Using an integrated Armington-Leontief framework with 2022 IMPLAN data, we trace a tariff shock on Canadian softwood lumber into residential construction costs and mortgage payments. For a baseline $420,000 home with a typical principal-and-interest payment of about $2,190, a 25 % tariff raises monthly payments by $26-$41 (1.2 %–1.9 %), depending on market flexibility. In contrast, a one percentage...