Treesearch

Upland hardwood forests dominate the Appalachian landscape. However, early successional forests are limited. In WV and PA, for example, only 8 percent of the timberland is classified as seedling and sapling-sized. Typically no management occurs in these forests due to the high cost of treatment and the lack of marketable products. If bioenergy markets come to fruition, these young forests can be managed in ways that promote improved forest growth, increased wildlife habitat, and biomass feedstocks. We will demonstrate how strip thinning in young stands can simultaneously provide (1)...

Total quantities of tree attributes can be estimated in plantations by sampling on plantation rows using several methods. At random sample points on a row, either fixed row lengths or variable row lengths with a fixed number of sample trees can be assessed. Ratio of means or mean of ratios estimators can be developed for the fixed number of trees option but are not designunbiased. Ducey’s estimator samples a fixed number of trees and is design-unbiased, as is sampling fixed row length. Simulations indicted that some of the ratio estimators could have substantial bias on rows containing...

A loblolly pine plantation near Eagletown, Oklahoma was used to test standardized tree ring widths in detecting snow and ice storms. Widths of two rings immediately following suspected storms were standardized against widths of seven rings following the storm (Stan1 and Stan2). Values of Stan1 less than -0.900 predict a severe (usually ice) storm when Stan 2 is less than -0.290. Values of Stan1 between 0.000 and -0.900 and Stan2 between 0.000 and -0.290 indicate a mild (usually snow) storm.

Seedlings from two families of the BC3F3 backcross generation of the American chestnut (Castanea dentata) and Chinese chestnut (C. mollissima) were cultured in 2013 in Missouri using the Root Production Method®, a container-based system used to avoid disease problems associated with bareroot nursery production. After culling part of the seedlings at initial leaf formation in a greenhouse, both the culled and the remaining “kept” seedlings were transplanted into containers of 1.33, 1.57, and 2.62 L and grown outdoors. Seedlings, remaining in their containers, were brought to central...

Oak-hickory communities are a widespread component of the landscape in the southeastern United States, often providing critical habitat and containing high plant species richness. With changing land use and fire exclusion, however, species composition has shifted in many areas to off-site species that are more fire-sensitive. These fire-sensitive species often create a closed-canopy structure (termed “mesophication”) and composition that changes fire dynamics and complicates restoration efforts. One important, but understudied, aspect of mesophication is the potential change in fuelbed...

This resource update provides an overview of forest resources in South Dakota based on an inventory conducted by the U.S. Forest Service, Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program at the Northern Research Station (NRS) in cooperation with the South Dakota Department of Agriculture, Resource Conservation and Forestry Division. Estimates are based on field data collected using the FIA annualized sample design and are updated yearly. For the 2015 inventory, estimates for current variables such as area, volume, and biomass are based on 8,272 plot samples collected from 2010 to 2015. Change...

Sustainable development efforts in urban areas often focus on understanding and managing factors that influence all aspects of health and wellbeing. Research has shown that public parks and green space provide a variety of physical, psychological, and social benefits to urban residents, but few studies have examined the influence of parks on comprehensive measures of subjective wellbeing at the city level. Using 2014 data from 44 U.S. cities, we evaluated the relationship between urban park quantity, quality, and accessibility and aggregate self-reported scores on the Gallup-Healthways...

More wood use in the United States to construct low-rise nonresidential (NR) buildings would increase consumption and production of softwood (SW) lumber, engineered wood products, and structural and nonstructural wood panels. Using a consequential life-cycle analysis, we estimated the change in net CO2 emissions thatwould be caused by increased use of SWlumber and structural panels in NR construction. Carbon (C) storage and emissions were projected over 50 years for baseline and increased wood use scenarios using the US Forest ProductsModule operating within the Global Forest Products...

Migration is costly in terms of time, energy and safety. Optimal migration theory suggests that individual migratory birds will choose between these three costs depending on their motivation and available resources. To test hypotheses about use of migratory strategies by large soaring birds, we used GPS telemetry to track 18 adult, 13 sub-adult and 15 juvenile Golden Eagles Aquila chrysaetos in eastern North America. Each age-class had potentially different motivations during migration. During spring, the migratory performance (defined here as the directness of migratory flight) of adults...

Monitoring is a critical component of ecological restoration and requires the use of metrics that are meaningful and interpretable. We analyzed the effectiveness of the Floristic Quality Index (FQI), a vegetative community metric based on species richness and the level of sensitivity to anthropogenic disturbance of individual species present (Coefficient of Conservatism (CC)), using ground layer vegetation data from forests and woodlands with different fire histories in the Missouri Ozarks, USA. Specifically, we used total species richness, mean CC, and FQI to quantify differences in...