Treesearch

This resource update provides an overview of forest resources in east Texas based on an inventory conducted by the U.S. Forest Service, Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program at the Southern Research Station (SRS) in cooperation with Texas A&M Forest Service. The 254 counties of Texas are consolidated into seven FIA survey units—Southeast (unit 1), Northeast (unit 2), North Central (unit 3), South (unit 4), West Central (unit 5), Northwest (unit 6), and West (unit 7). The estimates presented in this update are limited to east Texas, which is made up of units 1 and 2 with a total of 43...

This work investigates how potential changes in trade patterns resulting from increased economic integration in the Asia-Pacific region may affect the risk for nonindigenous species spread to the United States. We construct an invasion risk index utilizing the results from a global economic modeling framework in tandem with data for climate similarities between trade partners. The index is based on risk of introduction, determined by changes in trade, and risk of establishment, given by terrestrial and marine climate similarities between countries. The results indicate that Japan may be...

The interactions of terrestrial C pools and fluxes with spatial and temporal variation in climate are not well understood. We conducted this study in the southern Appalachian Mountains where complex topography provides variability in temperature, precipitation, and forest communities. In 1990, we established five large plots across an elevation gradient allowing us to study the regulation of C and N pools and cycling by temperature and water, in reference watersheds in Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory, a USDA Forest Service Experimental Forest, in western NC, USA. Communities included...

Dendroecology is the science that dates tree rings to their exact calendar year of formation to study processes that influence forest ecology (e.g., Speer 2010 [1], Amoroso et al., 2017 [2]). Reconstruction of past fire regimes is a core application of dendroecology, linking fire history to population dynamics and climate effects on tree growth and survivorship. Since the early 20th century when dendrochronologists recognized that tree rings retained fire scars (e.g., Figure 1), and hence a record of past fires, they have conducted studies worldwide to reconstruct [2] the historical range...

Nature conservation constitutes an important realm of professional practice with strong connections to the discourses on nature and sustainability. In recent decades much of that discourse has taken an explicitly spatial turn, observable across numerous domains of ecological, social, and political thought (Williams et al., 2013; Wu, 2006). The aim of this chapter is to examine how spacing nature conservation, as a form of place-making, is transforming utilitarian natural resource management away from its formative roots in mid-nineteenth-century Newtonian and mechanistic explanations of...

BACKGROUND: Semiochemicals formonitoring, attracting or repelling pest and beneficial organisms are increasingly deployed in agricultural and forest systems for pest management. However, the use of aggregation pheromones and host-plant attractants for the express purpose of increasing the efficacy of classical biological control agents of weeds has not been widely reported. Therefore, we conducted field-based assays to determine if a specialized wax-basedmatrix impregnated with an aggregation pheromone of the northern tamarisk beetle Diorhabda carinulata (Desbrochers) or host-plant...

Forests and grasslands have changed during the past 200 years in the eastern USA, and it is now possible to quantify loss and conversion of vegetation cover at regional scales. We quantified historical (ca. 1786-1908) and current land cover and determined long-term ecosystem change to either land use or closed forests in eight states of the Great Lakes and Midwest. Historically, the region was 35% grasslands (31 million hectares), 38% open forests of savannas and woodlands (33 million hectares), and 25% closed forests (22 million hectares). Currently, the region is about 85% land use (76...

Deferment cutting is a two-aged regeneration method in which the majority of the stand is harvested and a dispersed component of overstory trees—approximately 15–20% of the basal area – is retained for at least onehalf rotation and up one full rotation for reasons other than regeneration. Careful consideration of residual trees, in both characteristics and harvesting, is necessary to improve the chances that individual trees will survive until the next planned harvest. A long-term experimental deferment cutting study was established on the Fernow Experimental Forest and Monongahela...

This article presents a test method that was developed to screen adhesive formulations for finger-jointed lumber. The goal was to develop a small-scale test that could be used to predict whether an adhesive would pass a full-scale ASTM E119 wall assembly test. The method involved loading a 38-mm square finger-jointed sample in a four-point bending test inside of an oven with a target sample temperature of 204°C. The deformation (creep) was examined as a function of time. It was found that samples fingerjointed with melamine formaldehyde and phenol resorcinol formaldehyde adhesives had the...

Biofuel properties can be improved through torrefaction, whereby the biomass is treated with moderately elevated temperatures (200–300°C) under conditions that are essentially anaerobic and at atmospheric pressure. Varying the torrefaction conditions of temperature and treatment duration, as well as any feedstock pretreatments (drying, grinding), can generate products having varying degrees of thermal degradation, thus impacting performance in subsequent biofuel applications (e.g., gasifcation, pyrolysis, combustion). Pulp-grade pine wood chips were processed through a laboratory-scale...