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Poster abstracts presented at Moving from status to trends: Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) symposium 2012.

Additional presentation abstracts in Moving from status to trends: Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) symposium 2012.

Forest operations generate large quantities of forest biomass residues that can be used for production of bioenergy and bioproducts. However, a significant portion of recoverable residues are inaccessible to large chip vans, making use financially infeasible. New production systems must be developed to increase productivity and reduce costs to facilitate use of these materials. We present a comparison of two alternative systems to produce biomass fuel (i.e., "hog fuel") from forest residues that are inaccessible to chip vans: (1) forwarding residues in fifth-wheel end-dump trailers to a...

Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) returns from the spaceborne Geoscience Laser Altimeter (GLAS) sensor may offer an alternative to solely field-based forest biomass sampling. Such an approach would rely upon model-based inference, which can account for the uncertainty associated with using modeled, instead of field-collected, measurements. Model-based methods have been thoroughly described in the statistical literature, and an increasing number of model-based forestry applications use tactically acquired airborne LiDAR. Adapting these methods to GLAS’s irregular acquisition pattern...

Multi-resource inventory data are used in conjunction with Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data from the Pennsylvania Department of Natural Resource's PAMAP Program to assess the utility of extensive LiDAR acquisitions for large area forest assessments. Background, justification, and initial study designs are presented. The proposed study will involve three phases: 1) characterization of relationships between LiDAR cloud metrics and statistical summaries of tree information on forest inventory plots, 2) use of the inventory data to calibrate LiDAR-based forest biomass models, and 3)...

Extensive expanses of forest often change at a slow pace. In this common situation, FIA produces informative estimates of current status with the Moving Average (MA) method and post-stratification with a remotely sensed map of forest-nonforest cover. However, MA "smoothes out" estimates over time, which confounds analyses of temporal trends; and post-stratification limits gains from remote sensing. Time-series estimators, like the Kalman Filter (KF), better detect and analyze unexpected or rapid changes in dynamic forests. KF is a recursive multivariate model-based estimator that separates...

Published research emphasizes rapid downstream export of terrestrial carbon from mountainous headwater rivers, but little work focuses on mechanisms that create carbon storage along these rivers, or on the volume of carbon storage. Here we estimate organic carbon stored in diverse valley types of headwater rivers in Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, USA. We show that low-gradient, broad valley bottoms with old-growth forest or active beaver colonies store the great majority of above- and below-ground carbon. These laterally unconfined valley segments constitute

This study tested the erosion mitigation effectiveness of agricultural straw and two wood-based mulches for four years on decommissioned forest roads. Plots were installed on the loosely consolidated, bare soil to measure sediment production, mulch cover, and plant regrowth. The experimental design was a repeated measures, randomized block on two soil types common in the northern Rocky Mountain area. The control produced the most sediment, while wood strands produced the least during the critical first winter following road decommissioning. Following the first year, there was no statistical...

In 2009, the Forest Inventory and Analysis Program (FIA) updated its biomass estimation protocols by switching to the component ratio method to estimate biomass of medium and large trees. Additionally, FIA switched from using regional equations to the current FIA aboveground sapling biomass equations that predict woody sapling (2.5 to 12.4 cm d.b.h.) biomass using the Jenkins et al. (2003) equations (Forest Science 49 (1): 12-35) and then multiplying predictions by species-specific adjustment factors. The new equations have not been verified for saplings in Maine where sapling-dominated...

Serving as a carbon (C) accounting tool, the Forest Vegetation Simulator (FVS) is widely used by forest managers and researchers to forecast future forest C stocks. Assessments of the uncertainty that FVS equations provide in terms of their ability to accurately project forest biomass and C would seemingly differ, depending on the region and scale of interest to the user. This analysis used permanent sample plot data obtained from the annual Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) Program database to assess the performance of the diameter at breast height (d.b.h.) increment function in the...