Treesearch

Climate-based predictions of species distributions provide information for understanding impacts of climate change. However, species distribution models do not include land management zones as input. Improving understanding of geographic shifts will require consideration of management zones where certain activities could facilitate or impede responses to climate change. For instance, assisted migration to overcome dispersal barriers could be challenged in areas designated for “untrammeled” character (e.g., wilderness). Alternatively, large tracts of land with uninterrupted disturbance...

This publication provides an overview of the forest resources in Maine based upon inventories conducted by the USDA Forest Service, Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program of the Northern Research Station. Information about the national and regional FIA program is available online at www.fia.fs.fed.us. Since 1999, FIA has implemented an annual inventory in the State and currently measures 20 percent of the sample plots each year. For the 2017 inventory, estimates for current variables, such as area, volume, and biomass, are based on 3,526 plots inventoried from 2013-2017. Change...

Forests cannot be managed sustainably without reliable data to inform decisions. National Forest Inventories (NFI) tend to report national statistics, with sub-national stratification based on domestic ecological classification systems. It is becoming increasingly important to be able to report statistics on ecosystems that span international borders, as global change and globalization expand stakeholders’ spheres of concern. The state of a transnational ecosystem can only be properly assessed by examining the entire ecosystem. In global forest resource assessments, it may be useful to...

This publication provides an overview of the forest resources in Massachusetts based upon inventories conducted by the USDA Forest Service, Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program of the Northern Research Station. Information about the national and regional FIA program is available online at www.fia.fs.fed.us. Since 2003, FIA has implemented an annual inventory in the State and currently measures 14 percent of the sample plots each year. For the 2017 inventory, estimates for current variables, such as area, volume, and biomass, are based on 790 plots inventoried from 2011-2017. Change...

This publication provides an overview of the forest resources in Rhode Island based upon inventories conducted by the USDA Forest Service, Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program of the Northern Research Station. Information about the national and regional FIA program is available online at www.fia.fs.fed.us. Since 2003, FIA has implemented an annual inventory in the State and currently measures 14 percent of the sample plots each year. For the 2017 inventory, estimates for current variables, such as area, volume, and biomass, are based on 222 plots inventoried from 2011-2017. Change...

Mixed land ownership affects the scope for cooperative bargaining between jurisdictions to undertake control activities to slow the spread of an invasive species. We consider a problem in which emerald ash borer (EAB) spreads from an infested to an uninfested jurisdiction, where both contain ash trees on public and private land. We develop a dynamic model of cooperative Nash bargaining to examine how the mix of land ownership within each municipality affects the path of a negotiated transfer payment from the uninfested to the infested jurisdiction. Using a numerical simulation, we demonstra...

The Short-Range Ensemble Forecast (SREF) system is verified and bias corrected for fire weather days (FWDs) defined as having an elevated probability of wildfire occurrence using a statistical Fire Weather Index (FWI) over a subdomain of the northeastern United States (NEUS) between 2007 and 2014. The SREF is compared to the Rapid Update Cycle and Rapid Refresh analyses for temperature, relative humidity, specific humidity, and the FWI. An additive bias correction is employed using the most recent previous 14 days [sequential bias correction (SBC)] and the most recent previous 14 FWDs...

Cultural practices to develop larger, more robust oak seedlings have been developed, however, the potential improvement conferred by these larger seedlings has received limited testing in the Northeast. We evaluated the effect of seedling size and pedigree on the survival, growth, and competitive ability of northern red oak (Quercus rubra L.) seedlings planted on a xeric site in northeastern Pennsylvania. We planted seedlings from a state tree nursery that represented locally available seedling stock, as well as high-quality seedlings from seven half-sibling families grown following...

This resource update provides an overview of forest resources in Indiana based on an inventory conducted by the USDA Forest Service, Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program at the Northern Research Station in cooperation with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources. Estimates are based on field data collected using the FIA annualized strategic sample design and are updated yearly. In 2014, NRS-FIA changed to a 7-year inventory cycle, wherein 1/7th (14.3 percent) of the plots will be measured annually. For the 2017 inventory, estimates for current variables such as area, volume, and...

In the fourth quarter the U.S. housing markets improved incrementally from quarter three. Total permits, single-family starts, new house sales, and single-family spending all improved modestly quarter-over-quarter. The majority of sectors increased on a year-over-year basis as well; only multifamily starts decreased, albeit minimally. Viewed from a recent historical context, all housing construction subsectors exceeded the record lows recorded in the 2008 to 2011 time period.