Treesearch

Choice and no-choice tests were run to evaluate natural resistance of the woods of two Morus species (Morus alba and Morus nigra) against the subterranean, Heterotermes indicola, under field conditions. Toxicity, antifeedent, and repellency potential of the heartwood extractives was also investigated under laboratory conditions. Heartwood extractives were removed from wood shavings by using methanol or an ethanol: toluene (2:1) mixture. Results of choice and no-choice tests with sap and heartwood blocks exposed to termites, showed that both mulberry species were resistant to termites but...

Lab-sca e structura insu ated pane s (SIPs), using ignin-incorporated rigid po yurethane (RPU) foams as the therma insu ation core, were fabricated and characterized. The RPU foams incorporating surface-modifed ignin were sandwiched between two oriented strand board (OSB) sheets to produce ignin-incorporated SIPs with nomina dimensions of 350×350×46mm3. In comparison to the reference RPU foam without ignin, the ignin-incorporated RPU foams exhibited progressive y higher therma stabi ities coinciding with ignin amount, but simi ar therma conductivity (˜24.5mW·m−1 K−1) and water absorption...

The development and use of tornado shelters have helped reduce loss of human life associated with extreme weather events. Currently, the majority of shelters are built from either steel or concrete. The development of the cross-laminated timber (CLT) industry in the United States has provided an ideal wood product to resist the debris impact and high wind forces associated with tornados. This report overviews the design and development of a residential tornado shelter constructed from CLT. This design was impact- and wind-pressure-tested according to the core requirements of the Internation...

Structural insulated panels (SIPs) have been successfully used in wall and roof construction for years. Combining the strength of facers made of wood structural panels and the energy-efficient core made of foam plastic insulation, SIP walls and roofs are structurally strong and energy-efficient construction systems. However, the data for lateral load performance of most SIP systems have generally remained proprietary and are covered in code evaluation reports held by various SIP manufacturers. The purpose of this project was to develop test data needed to characterize the lateral load...

One measure of habitat quality is a species’ demographic performance in a habitat and the gold standard metric of performance is reproduction. Such a measure, however, may be misleading if individual quality is a fitness determinant. We report on factors affecting lifetime reproduction (LR), the total number of lifetime fledglings produced by an individual, and long-term territory-specific reproduction in a multi-generational study of northern goshawks (Accipiter gentilis). LR increased with longer lifespans and more breeding attempts and was strongly correlated with the number of recruits...

With the accumulating evidence of changing disturbance regimes becoming increasingly obvious, there is potential for disturbance ecology to become the most valuable lens through which climate-related disturbance events are interpreted. In this paper, I revisit some of the central themes of disturbance ecology and argue that the knowledge established in the field of disturbance ecology continues to be relevant to ecosystem management, even with rapid changes to disturbance regimes and changing disturbance types in local ecosystems. Disturbance ecology has been tremendously successful over...

Prevention activities are actions designed to reduce the likelihood of an ignition in the wildlands or wildland-urban interface (WUI). Excluded are flame spread and firebrand generation processes, and related mitigation approaches, such as fuels management. This section describes preventable wildfire/WUI ignitions, recent ignition patterns over time in the United States, common prevention activities and approaches, methods for measuring the economic performance of prevention activities, recent studies that measured prevention effectiveness, and current measurement challenges.

This is the Preface paper for a special issue of Environmental Pollution that includes ten papers that synthesize cutting-edge studies on: 1) the characteristics of N deposition to global forests, 2) the impacts of N deposition on forest structure and function, 3) the responses of forest ecosystems to regional trends of N deposition and 4) the management options to mitigate negative impacts of N deposition in forest ecosystems. Among the ten papers were reviews on the influence of chronic N deposition on: the structure and function of forest mycorrhizal communities; understory plant...

The objectives of this study were to reconstruct historical fire regime characteristics of red pine (Pinus resinosa) forests in the Adirondack Mountains, and to highlight potential implications for the conservation and preservation of fire-dependent natural communities. Tree-ring dating of dead and living fire-scarred trees at two sites produced records spanning from 1577 to 2015. Historical fire years spanned the years 1693 to 1913 with a concentration of events in the mid-1800s. Fires were primarily low to moderate severity, dormant-season events that were not associated with summer...

The southern pine beetle (SPB) is among the leading biological agents killing southern pine species in the eastern United States. In light of recognized spatiotemporal autocorrelation in SPB outbreaks, we devise a spatiotemporal block bootstrapping method that can be applied to analyze spatiotemporally dependent infestations. We also identify the relevant risk determinants and evaluate their impacts on the frequency of SPB outbreaks. For example, we find forest type, climate, and natural disasters like storm and forest management are all significantly associated with SPB risks. Using the...