Treesearch

Emerald ash borer, Agrilus planipennis Fairmaire, an Asian wood-boring beetle, has devastated ash (Fraxinus spp.) trees in North American forests and landscapes since its discovery there in 2002. In this study, we collected living larvae from EAB-resistant Manchurian ash (Fraxinus mandschurica), and susceptible white (Fraxinus americana) and green (Fraxinus pennsylvanica) ash hosts, and quantified the activity and production of selected detoxification, digestive, and antioxidant enzymes. We hypothesized that differences in larval physiology could be used to infer resistance mechanisms of...

The recent rise of institutional timberland ownership has led to a significant change in the structure and conduct of the timber industry in the United States. In this study,we apply a two-period harvest model to assess the timber harvesting behavior of various landowners at the stand level by utilizing USDA Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis data for nine southern states. Forest industry and institutional timberland owners were found to be more likely to conduct partial and final harvests than nonindustrial private forest landowners. Aggregately, Timberland Investment Management...

The principle findings of the 2009 forest survey in the State of Georgia and changes that have occurred since previous surveys are presented. There are 24.8 million acres of forest in Georgia. Over 65 percent of the State is forested, with all survey units having more forest land than nonforest land. Georgia’s forest resources are not only considerable, they have been relatively stable, showing little change in either forest land or timberland area in the past 10 years. Forest land in Georgia held 16.5 billion trees with diameter at breast height (d.b.h.) >1 inch, and those trees held 2.2...

Habitat loss and fragmentation are among the major drivers of population declines and extinction, particularly in large carnivores. Connectivity models provide practical tools for assessing fragmentation effects and developing mitigation or conservation responses. To be useful to conservation practitioners, connectivity models need to incorporate multiple scales and include realistic scenarios based on potential changes to habitat and anthropogenic pressures. This will help to prioritize conservation efforts in a changing landscape.

Two whole-tree chip piles were monitored for moisture content, temperature, and relative humidity from October 8th, 2010 to March 16th, 2011 at a location in south Alabama. Initial moisture content samples were collected immediately after chips were delivered to the study location on October 8th for Pile 1 and October 22nd for Pile 2. During pile construction, Lascar EL-USB-2+ sensors were placed at strategic locations within each pile to monitor temperature and humidity. Samples were collected from within each pile over time through a plastic pipe that was placed near the pile center...

The increase in biomass usage for fuels and energy has required a re-examination of harvesting and transportation systems to efficiently deliver these products to market. Some biomass markets accept forest residues or whole trees (including stem wood, bark and needles) as a feedstock. Therefore, there is less need to remove limbs and tops or deconstruct the tree other than to make transport more efficient. Transporting untrimmed wood or whole trees directly to the mill would appear to be a viable option to achieve increased harvesting productivity and efficiency. In the spring of 2014 a...

Keeping It Wild 2 is an interagency strategy to monitor trends in selected attributes of wilderness character based on lessons learned from 15 years of developing and implementing wilderness character monitoring across the National Wilderness Preservation System. This document updates and replaces Keeping It Wild: An Interagency Strategy for Monitoring Wilderness Character Across the National Wilderness Preservation System (Landres and others 2008), and provides a foundation for agencies to develop a nationally consistent approach to implement this monitoring. This monitoring strategy...

While most hydrological models reproduce the general flow dynamics, they frequently fail to adequately mimic system-internal processes. In particular, the relationship between storage and discharge, which often follows annual hysteretic patterns in shallow hard-rock aquifers, is rarely considered in modelling studies. One main reason is that catchment storage is difficult to measure, and another one is that objective functions are usually based on individual variables time series (e.g. the discharge). This reduces the ability of classical procedures to assess the relevance of the conceptual...

The present paper discusses a coupled gridded crop modeling and hydrologic modeling system that can examine the benefits of irrigation and costs of irrigation and the coincident impact of the irrigation water withdrawals on surface water hydrology. The system is applied to the Southeastern U.S. The system tools to be discussed include a gridded version (GriDSSAT) of the crop modeling system DSSAT. The irrigation demand from GriDSSAT is coupled to a regional hydrologic model (WaSSI). GriDSSAT and WaSSI are coupled through the USDA NASS CropScape data to provide crop acreages in each...

Place-based programs are being noticed as key opportunities to prevent disease and promote public health and safety for populations at-large. As one key type of place-based intervention, nature-based and green space strategies can play an especially large role in improving health and safety for dwellers in urban environments such as US legacy cities that lack nature and greenery. In this paper, we describe the current understanding of place-based influences on public health and safety. We focus on nonchemical environmental factors, many of which are related to urban abandonment and blight....