Treesearch

Stem decays of living trees, known also as heart rots, are essential elements of wildlife habitat, especially for cavity-nesting birds and mammals. Stem decays are common features of old-growth forests of coastal Alaska, but are generally absent in young, managed forests. We offer several strategies for maintaining or restoring fungal stem decay in these managed forests that can be used to enhance specific types of wildlife habitat.

Currently, little information is available to estimate individual tree attributes for longleaf pine (Pinus palustris Mill.), an important tree species of the southeastern United States. The majority of available models are local, relying on stem diameter outside bark at breast height (dbh, cm) and not including stand-level parameters. We developed a set of individual tree equations to predict tree height (H, m), stem diameter inside bark at 1.37 m height (dbhIB, cm), stem volume outside bark (VOB, m3), and stem volume inside bark (VIB, m3), as well as functions to determine merchantable...

WoodCite is a Microsoft® Access-based application that allows wood component manufacturers to develop product price quotations for their current and potential customers. The application was developed by the U.S. Forest Service and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, in cooperation with the Wood Components Manufacturers Association.

Conservation planning studies at small scales such as forest stands and below are uncommon. However, for retention forestry, developed during the last two decades and with current wide and increasing application in boreal and temperate regions, the need for cost-effective selection of individual trees is evident. In retention forestry certain trees are left at final harvest to promote flora and fauna. There is also a scarcity of studies on information costs and how these relate to the cost-effectiveness of conservation. We addressed both of these issues by studying whether decisions about...

Carbon storage and flux estimates for the two national forests in Alaska are provided using inventory data from permanent plots established in 1995–2003 and remeasured in 2004–2010. Estimates of change are reported separately for growth, sapling recruitment, harvest, mortality, snag recruitment, salvage, snag falldown, and decay. Although overall aboveground carbon mass in live trees did not change in the Tongass National Forest, the Chugach National Forest showed a 4.5 percent increase. For the Tongass National Forest, results differed substantially for managed and unmanaged forest:...

Accurate and efficient estimation of forest growth and live biomass is a critical element in assessing potential responses to forest management and environmental change. The objective of this study was to develop models to predict longleaf pine tree diameter at breast height (dbh) and merchantable stem volume (V) using data obtained from field measurements. We used longleaf pine tree data from 3,376 planted trees on 127 permanent plots located in the U.S. Gulf Coastal Plain region to fit equations to predict dbh and V as functions of tree height (H) and crown area (CA). Prediction of dbh...

Woodland (Plethodontid) salamanders are the most abundant vertebrates in North American forests, functioning as predators on invertebrates and prey for higher trophic levels. We investigated the role of Ensatina (Ensatina eschscholtzii) in regulating invertebrate numbers and leaf litter retention in a northern California forest. Our objective was to examine how salamander predation on invertebrates affects leaf litter retention and the amount available for soil-building and carbon capture at the litter-soil interface. We used field enclosures to quantify the effects of Ensatina on invertebr...

Ungulate browsers, when at high densities, are major drivers of vegetation change in forests world-wide. Their effects operate via a variety of generalizable mechanisms related to plant palatability and relative growth rate with respect to browsing pressure. Though such impacts are obviously long-lasting when they determine composition of tree regeneration, we document in a unique long-term (30 year) experiment that biological legacies of initial deer density persist in the understorey herbaceous vegetation at least 20 years after deer densities were equalized.

Nearctic-neotropic migrant birds need to replenish energy reserves during stopover periods to successfully complete their semiannual movements. In this study we used linear models to examine the habitat use of 11 migrant species in northeastern Costa Rica to better understand the influence of food and structural resources on the presence of birds during stopover periods. Our models indicated that frugivorous migrants primarily used food abundance, while insectivorous migrants chiefly used vegetation structure as cues for habitat use during stopover. In addition to habitat use models, we...

Japan has strong research programmes in the catchment sciences that overlap with interests in the US catchment science community, particularly in experimental and field-based research. Historically, however, there has been limited interaction between these two hydrologic science communities because of differences in language, culture, and research approaches. These differences highlight a potential for scientific discovery through coordinated interactions. In this vein, US--Japan Joint Seminars have been held about once a decade since the early 1970s (Yevjevich and Downs, 1971; Bras et...