Treesearch

The South’s production of pulpwood increased from 60.6 million cords in 2015 to 64.5 million cords in 2016. Roundwood production increased by 1.8 million cords to 51.2 million cords and accounted for 79 percent of the South’s total pulpwood production. The use of wood residue increased 19 percent to 13.3 million cords in 2016. Alabama and Georgia led the South in total production, with 10.3 and 10.1 million cords, respectively. In 2016, 78 southern pulpmills were operating and drawing wood from the 13 Southern States.

Chaparral, among the most stable and resilient vegetation types in California, has shown signs of degradation by altered fire frequency, drought, non-native species, recreation, urban development, and possibly anthropogenic nitrogen deposition in southern California. Restoration has been practiced less frequently in chaparral than other, more extensively disturbed vegetation types, but recent degradation suggests that restoration may be important for the maintenance of ecosystem services such as slope stabilization, carbon sequestration, biodiversity conservation, and scenic beauty. Most...

The goal of this study was to demonstrate how synchrotron-based X-ray fluorescence microscopy (XFM) can be used to better understand the mechanisms of copper tolerance in wood decay fungi. Copper is a major component in commercial wood preservatives as it is toxic to many wood decay fungi. However, certain fungi are copper tolerant and can attack preservative-treated wood, resulting in structural damage to treated wood members. Here we used large-field XFM to visualize six different elements (K, Ca, Mn, Fe, Cu, and Zn) in the mycelia and wood inoculated with four different species of brown...

Savanna and woodland are transitional vegetation communities that have largely disappeared while many earlysuccessional bird species have simultaneously declined in abundance. Pine savanna and woodland are being restored in the Midwest through prescribed fire and tree thinning to create their characteristic open canopy, dense ground layer, and variable shrub cover. Ideally, these restoration strategies for vegetation should also facilitate bird conservation objectives. We determined daily nest survival (DSR) for 6 songbird species, representing both shrubnesting and canopy-nesting species,...

Five full-scale fire experiments were conducted to observe the performance of a two-level apartment-style structure constructed of mass timber. Each level consisted of a one bedroom apartment, an L-shaped corridor, and a stairwell connecting the two levels. One of the primary variables considered in this test series was the amount and location of exposed mass timber. The amount of mass timber surface area protected by gypsum wallboard ranged from 100% to no protection. For each experiment, the fuel load was identical and the fire was initiated in a base cabinet in the kitchen. In the first...

Secondary forests account for more than half of tropical forests and represent a growing carbon sink, but rates of biomass accumulation vary by a factor of two or more even among plots in the same landscape. To better understand the drivers of this variability, we used airborne lidar to measure forest canopy height and estimate biomass over 4529 ha at Serra do Conduru Park in Southern Bahia, Brazil. We measured trees in 30 georeferenced field plots (0.25-ha each) to estimate biomass using allometry. Then we estimated aboveground biomass density (ABD) across the lidar study area using a...

The invention of the Gutenberg printing press in 1440 started a steady increase in demand for paper. Until the mid-1800s, most paper pulp was made by collecting, cleaning, and beating discarded linen and cotton rags. Collection of rags was such a large and organized industry that companies were regulated by the government and workers had unions. Henry Mayhew described a grand banquet of the fraternal order of chiffonniers (rag-pickers).1 As literacy and printing technology improved, demand for paper outstripped supply, and the search for alternative sources of fiber began in earnest. For...

Peroxidases are considered essential agents of lignin degradation by white-rot basidiomycetes. However, low-molecularweight oxidants likely have a primary role in lignin breakdown because many of these fungi delignify wood before its porosity has sufficiently increased for enzymes to infiltrate. It has been proposed that lignin peroxidases (LPs, EC 1.11.1.14) fulfill this role by oxidizing the secreted fungal metabolite veratryl alcohol (VA) to its aryl cation radical (VA ), releasing it to act as a one-electron lignin oxidant within woody plant cell walls. Here, we attached the fluorescent...

Thousand Cankers Disease (TCD) of Juglans and Pterocarya (Juglandaceae) involves a fungal pathogen, Geosmithia morbida, and a primary insect vector, Pityophthorus juglandis. TCD was described originally from dying Juglans nigra trees in the western United States (USA), but it was reported subsequently from the eastern USA and northern Italy. The disease is often difficult to diagnose due to the absence of symptoms or signs on the bark surface of the host. Furthermore, disease symptoms can be confused with those caused by other biotic and abiotic agents. Thus, there is a critical need for a...

There is little published scientific literature on the laboratory or field testing of wood-plastic composites (WPC) against termite attack. Therefore, the objective of this research was to investigate termite resistance (both laboratory and field) of 5 different extruded WPC blends of 50% western pine wood flour (WF) and high-density polyethylene (HDPE), and untreated pine solid wood. The study included two unmodified control WPC blends (one with cut surfaces and one with plastic rich surfaces); one blend with 3% coupling agent (maleated polyethylene, MAPE); one blend with acetylated WF;...