Treesearch

Many forests within the southern Appalachian region, USA, have experienced decades of fire exclusion, contributing to regeneration challenges for species such as oaks (Quercus spp. L.) and pines (Pinus spp. L.), and threatening the maintenance of oak-dominated forests in the future. While the use of prescribed fire as a forest management tool is increasing within this region, there remains a lack of information on the potential role of wildfire. A wildfire within the Daniel Boone National Forest, Kentucky, USA, provided an opportunity to investigate how wildfire affected forest vegetation...

Declines in populations of Pacific salmon have prompted extensive and costly restoration efforts, yet many populations are still in peril. An improved understanding of landscape-scale controls on salmon habitat should help focus restoration resources on areas with the greatest potential to host productive habitat. We investigate the contribution of deep-seated landslides (DSLs) to Coho Salmon habitat by comparing the quantity and connectivity of potential seasonal habitat observed in five streams with extensive DSLs to five lacking significant landsliding. Further, we measure valley width...

Pools provided by beaver (Castor canadensis) contribute to critical habitat requirements of salmonids in fluvial systems of the Pacific Northwest, therefore more land managers are interested in managing watersheds that include beavers or engaging in beaver-related restoration projects. We evaluated the utility of applying an existing beaver habitat suitability model to better understand beaver dam site characteristics in coastal Oregon, identify optimum dam site locations, and guide future beaver-related restoration efforts. We used a combination of t-tests, Wilcoxon rank sum tests, and a...

Managed conifer forests in temperate regions are critical for supplying wood products, but little is known about their potential for pollinator conservation. We hosted a workshop for Pacific Northwest managers and biologists to identify perceived information gaps regarding pollinators in managed conifer forests; we also undertook a litera-ture review on this topic to assess gaps in the primary literature. The most important gaps identified by workshop participants were a need for baseline data on pollinators in managed conifer forests, and for determining how forest management influences...

Understanding why wood bonds fail is an excellent route toward understanding how to make them better. Certifying a bonded product usually requires achieving a specifc load, percent wood failure, and an ability to withstand some form of moisture exposure without excessive delamination. While these tests protect the public from catastrophic failures, they are not very helpful in understanding why bonds fail. Understanding failure often requires going beyond what meets the naked eye, conducting additional tests, probing the wood surface, the fracture surface, adhesive properties, and the...

PREMISE OF THE STUDY: Various nondestructive testing technologies have been used for detecting and visualizing internal defects in urban trees. The results obtained by using diferent nondestructive testing tools can be interpreted in diferent ways, which may result in inaccurate assessment of the true condition of the inspected trees. The main objective of this study was to evaluate the reliability of acoustic tomography and ground-penetrating radar (GPR) technology for detecting internal decay in a number of diferent tree species. METHODS: One hundred and forty-seven individual trees of...

Continuous exterior insulation is becoming more common in North American above -grade walls in both retrofit applications and new construction, as a means to improve the thermal performance of wall assemblies. Although moisture performance of wood-frame wall assemblies has been studied extensively, the drying capability of wall assemblies with exterior insulation and an interior vapor retarder in cold climates is not well characterized. This study monitored the hygrothermal performance of wall assemblies with and without exterior insulation under high and low interior humidity conditions...

Surface fuels are the critical link between structure and function in frequently burned pine ecosystems, which are found globally (Williamson and Black,1981; Rebertus et al.,1989; Glitzenstein et al.,1995) [1–3]. We bring fuels to the forefront of fire ecology through the concept of the Ecology of Fuels (Hiers et al. 2009) [4]. This concept describes a cyclic process between fuels, fire behavior, and fire effects, which ultimately affect future fuel distribution (Mitchell et al. 2009) [5]. Low-intensity surface fires are driven by the variability in fine-scale (sub-m level) fuels (Loudermil...

Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) is a potential, feld-portable wood identifcation tool. NIRS has been studied as tool to identify some woods but has not been tested for Dalbergia. This study explored the efcacy of hand-held NIRS technology to discriminate, using multivariate analysis, the spectra of some high-value Dalbergia wood species: D. decipularis, D. sissoo, D. stevensonii, D. latifolia, D. retusa, all of which are listed in CITES Appendix II, and D. nigra, which is listed in CITES Appendix I. Identifcation models developed using partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA)...