Treesearch

This publication provides an overview of the 2013 U.S. housing market, including updated information and data, and is part of an ongoing series of quarterly and annual housing reports that provide historical information on housing permits, starts, houses under construction, and completions. In addition, short briefs present information regarding house sales, construction spending and economic impact, demographics, affordability and financing, wood usage in housing, types of housing, and other factors that affect the U.S. housing market. The purpose of this series of reports is to present...

The number of studies evaluating the quality and content of many types of plans have grown in recent decades. Natural resource conservation plans have been included in some of these plan evaluation studies; however, no meta-analysis of natural resource planning literature has been conducted. This focus is needed because natural resource conservation planning differs from other types (e.g., hazards mitigation, urban planning), in that planners often come from natural resource backgrounds, must plan in compliance with federal and state planning mandates, and typically operate under the...

The economic and social effects of drought are diverse and related to physical characteristics of drought, including spatial extent, severity, duration, and frequency that combine to determine drought’s overall effects on society. Most of the attention given to economic and social impacts of drought focuses on adverse consequences, but technology, public policies, economic activity, and social systems are largely adapted to the historical occurrence of drought-at least within the normal range. This chapter covers traditional impacts from drought, and also highlights possible adaptations,...

Quantifying the potential impacts of climatechange on water yield and ecosystem productivity is essential to developing sound watershed restoration plans, andecosystem adaptation and mitigation strategies. This study links an ecohydrological model (Water Supply and StressIndex, WaSSI) with WRF (Weather Research and Forecasting Model) using dynamically downscaled climate data ofthe HadCM3 model under the IPCC SRES A2 emission scenario. We evaluated the future (2031–2060) changes in evapotranspiration (ET), water yield (Q) and gross primary productivity (GPP) from the baseline period of...

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) play important roles in the environmental adaptation and fitness of plants. Comparison of the qualitative and quantitative differences in VOCs among closely related taxa and assessing the effects of environment on their emissions are important steps to deducing VOC function and evolutionary importance.

Future anthropogenic-induced changes to the earth’s climate will likely include increases in temperature and changes in precipitation that will increase the frequency and severity of droughts. Insects and fungal diseases are important disturbances in forests, yet understanding of the role of drought in outbreaks of these agents is limited. Current knowledge concerning the effects of drought on herbivorous insect and pathogen outbreaks in U.S. forests is reviewed, and compared between the relatively mesic and structurally diverse forests of the eastern U.S. and the more xeric forests of the...

Greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) and monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) and other pollinating insects have garnered a lot of attention recently from federal and state wildlife officials. These two species and pollinators share dwindling sagebrush habitat in the western United States that is putting their populations at risk. Sagebrush landscapes transformed by disturbances often require significant effort to restore their ecological function, and achieving desired results can be far more difficult and slow without the correct strategy. Fortunately, habitat restoration...

Forests and trees throughout the world are increasingly affected by factors related to global change. Expanding international trade has facilitated invasions of numerous insects and pathogens into new regions. Many of these invasions have caused substantial forest damage, economic impacts and losses of ecosystem goods and services provided by trees. Climate change is already affecting the geographic distribution of host trees and their associated insects and pathogens, with anticipated increases in pest impacts by both native and invasive pests. Although climate change will benefit many...

A significant concern about Metabolic Scaling Theory (MST) in real forests relates to consistent differences between the values of power law scaling exponents of tree primary size measures used to estimate mass and those predicted by MST. Here we consider why observed scaling exponents for diameter and height relationships deviate from MST predictions across three semi-arid conifer forests in relation to: (1) tree condition and physical form, (2) the level of inter-tree competition (e.g. open vs closed stand structure), (3) increasing tree age, and (4) differences in site productivity....