Treesearch

Hunting lease revenue can be a reliable supplemental income for forest landowners. Although studies have examined factors influencing per acre lease rates, little is known about how various characteristics are capitalized in hunting club dues. The objective of this study was to conduct a hedonic analysis of big game hunting club dues in Georgia, USA using a variety of club-, site-, and location-specific characteristics. To accomplish this objective, multivariate regression analysis was applied to explain variation in hunters’ self-reported big game hunting club dues in 2012. Implicit price...

Big game hunting on private leased forestland is popular in Georgia and other parts of the southern United States. Very often, the leasing arrangement takes the form of a club, wherein a specified number of members pay an annual fee to either a landowner or the club's manager to have a certain bundle of access rights in accordance with other club regulations or attributes. Currently, little is formally known about hunter preferences for club characteristics. The objective of this study was to identify hunter preferences for attributes related to big game hunting clubs and to derive...

High spatial resolution imagery provided by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can yield accurate and efficient estimation of tree dimensions and canopy structural variables at the local scale. We flew a low-cost, lightweight UAV over an experimental Pinus pinea L. plantation (290 trees distributed over 16 ha with different fertirrigation treatments) to determine the tree positions and to estimate individual tree height (h), diameter (d), biomass (wa), as well as changes in these variables between 2015 and 2017. We used Structure from Motion (SfM) and 3D point cloud filtering techniques to...

The composition of tree species occurring in a forest is important and can be affected by global change drivers such as climate change. To inform assessment and projection of global change impacts at broad extents, we used hierarchical cluster analysis and over 120,000 recent forest inventory plots to empirically define forest tree assemblages across the U.S., and identified the indicator and dominant species associated with each. Cluster typologies in two levels of a hierarchy of forest assemblages, with 29 and 147 groups respectively, were supported by diagnostic criteria. Groups in...

Imagine if you could measure all the genes being expressed at any one time in an organism and you knew what all the genes did in a cell. The power of this knowledge would allow you to determine how organisms regulate gene activity to survive. This is the essence of how “omics” science accelerates biological understanding. From a wood protections standpoint, understanding which genes regulate copper tolerance effectively identifies metabolic chokepoints that would have the highest likelihood of interfering with copper tolerance. Thus, the search for copper co-biocides is no longer random,...

The termite hindgut contains a bacterial community that symbiotically aids in digestion of cellulosic materials. For this paper, a species survey of bacterial hindgut symbionts in termites collected from Saucier, Mississippi was examined. Two methods were tested for optimal genetic material isolation. Genomic DNA was isolated from the hindgut luminal contents of five termites and 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene fragments were amplified with 16S rRNA amplicon primers. The fragments were cloned into E. coli cells and plasmid DNA was isolated from subsequent clones for sequencing. The results...

The state of Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources is responsible for operating one of the largest state park systems in the United States. Peninsula State Park, one of the state’s most visited parks, attracts more than one million visitors a year. This park contained one of the most iconic structures in the Wisconsin State Park system, a tall, wooden observation tower that was constructed in 1932. Because of concerns about the structural integrity of several of the large timbers in the tower, it was closed in the spring of 2015 and dismantled in fall 2016 at the request of the...

Manipulation of forest spatial patterns has become a common objective in restoration prescriptions throughout the central and southern Rocky Mountain dry-mixed conifer forest systems. Pre-Euro-American settlement forest reconstructions indicate that frequent-fire regimes developed forests with complex mosaics of individual trees, tree clumps of varying size, and openings. While it is broadly agreed upon that restoration to these forest conditions will improve ecosystem function, development of treatment prescriptions that can achieve desired spatial patterns on the landscape have been met...

This science update contains the findings of a 2013 canvass of all primary wood-using plants in Oklahoma, and presents changes in product output and residue use since 2011. It complements the Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) annual inventory of volume and removals from the State’s timberland. The canvass was conducted to determine the amount and source of wood receipts and annual timber product drain, by county, in 2013 and to determine interstate and cross-regional movement of industrial roundwood. Only primary wood-using mills were canvassed. Primary mills are those that process...

This report provides an overview of forest resources in Massachusetts based on an inventory conducted by the U.S. Forest Service, Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program of the Northern Research Station.Estimates are based on field data collected using the FIA annualized sample design. Results are for the measurement years 2011-2016 with comparisons made to 2007-20111(see footnote on bottom of page 2). Forest resource measurements were taken on 535 plots with about 14 percent of the plots measured each year. Growth, mortality, and removals statistics are based on 505 remeasured plots....