Treesearch

The principle findings of the 2013 forest survey in the State of Louisiana and changes that have occurred since previous surveysare presented. Topics examined include forest area, ownership, forest-type groups, stand structure, timber volume, growth, removals, and mortality. Emerald ash borer and invasive plants are also discussed in the context of Louisiana’s forests.

Riparian zones in semi-arid, mountainous regions provide a disproportionate amount of the available wildlife habitat and ecosystem services. Despite their importance, there is little guidance on the best way to map riparian zones for broad spatial extents (e.g., large watersheds) when detailed maps from field data or high-resolution imagery and terrain data are not available. Using well-established accuracy metrics (e.g., kappa, precision, computational complexity), we evaluated eight methods commonly used to map riparian zones. Focusing on a semi-arid, mountainous watershed, we found that...

Meeting forest restoration challenges relies on successful establishment of plant materials (e.g., seeds, cuttings, rooted cuttings, or seedlings, etc.; hereafter simply "seedlings"). The Target Plant Concept (TPC) provides a flexible framework that nursery managers and their clients can use to improve the survival and growth of these seedlings. The key tenets of the TPC are that (1) more emphasis is placed on how seedlings perform on the outplanting site rather than on nursery performance, (2) a partnership exists between the nursery manager and the client to determine the target plant...

This publication provides an overview of the forest resources in Maine based upon inventories conducted by the U.S. 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 http://fia.fs.fed.us. Since 1999, FIA has implemented an annual inventory measuring data on 20 percent of sample plots each year. For the 2015 inventory, estimates for current variables, such as area, volume, and biomass, are based on 3,592 plots inventoried from 2011-2015. Change variables, such as net...

Intensive water quality monitoring of agricultural watersheds can provide important information on the effects of land cover and effectiveness of conservation practices designed to mitigate water quality concerns associated with agricultural production.

This periodic resource update provides an overview of forest resources in Florida based on an inventory conducted by the U.S. Forest Service, Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program at the Southern Research Station in cooperation with the Florida Forest Service. Estimates are based on field data collected using the FIA annualized sample design and are updated yearly.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Water Quality Assessment program has developed a web-based decision support system (DSS) to provide free public access to the steady-stateSPAtially Referenced Regressions On Watershed attributes (SPARROW) model simulation results on nutrient conditions in streams and rivers and to offer scenario testing capabilities for research and water-quality planning.

Accurate fuel load and consumption predictions are important to estimate fire effects and air pollutant emissions. The FOFEM (First Order Fire Effects Model) is a commonly used model developed in the western United States to estimate fire effects such as fuel consumption, soil heating, air pollutant emissions, and tree mortality. However, the accuracy of the model in the eastern United States has not been well tested. As a result, managers are turning to locally collected data sets from eastern forests to improve the accuracy of FOFEM and other models. FOFEM lacks local fuel load and...

Restoration of hardwood-pine (Pinus L.) mixedwoods is an important man-agement goal in many pine plantations in the southern Cumberland Plateau in north-central Alabama, USA. Pine plantations have been relatively un-managed since initiation, and thus include a diversity of hardwoods developing in the understory. These unmanaged pine plantations have become increasingly vulnerable to insects, and management activities were initiated to facilitate transition towards hardwood-pine mixedwoods. We evaluated a combination of thinning and prescribed fire prescriptions in a randomized complete...

Georgia’s 24.7 million acres of forest are a diverse mix of hardwood and softwood tree species typical of the South. Hardwood forests account for 53 percent of the forested area versus 45 percent for softwood types, with balance in mixed forests. Georgia’s forest resources are considerable and increasing. The rate at which the State gained forest land acreage from converted agricultural land decreased until 2009 and after that time remained stable. The rate at which forest was lost to development decreased steadily since about 2007. There were 22.0 billion cubic feet of wood volume in...