Treesearch

Demand for forest biomass for bioenergy production and other uses is expected to increase to four times the current level in the next one to five years. The search for alternative energy sources, including forest bioenergy, increases pressure on the productive capacity of our western forestlands. The questions are: Can forest soils in the western U.S. support more intensive timber harvesting for both traditional uses and emerging bioenergy markets? Are biomass harvesting for bioenergy and sustainable soil productivity compatible? The answers are "yes!"

Beargrass (Xerophyllum tenax (Pursh) Nutt.) is a source of food, habitat, and raw material for animals, pollinating insects, and people across its range in the Western United States. The plant has long been used by Native Americans, who harvest the leaves for basketry and other crafts. More recently, beargrass has become an important component of international trade for the commercial floral greens industry. Changes in natural and anthropogenic disturbances are occurring within the range of beargrass, including fire frequency and severity, plant harvest intensity, and land use. This report...

The second full annual inventory of Nebraska's forests reports more than 1.5 million acres of forest land and 39 tree species. Forest land is dominated by the elm/ash/cottonwood and oak/hickory forest types, which occupy nearly half of the total forest land area. The volume of growing stock on timberland currently totals 1.1 billion cubic feet. The average annual net growth of growing stock from 2005 to 2010 is nearly 22 million cubic feet per year. This report includes additional information on forest attributes, land use change, carbon, timber products, and forest health. A DVD included...

Classical field methods of reconstructing drought using tree rings in humid, temperate regions typically target old trees from drought-prone sites. This approach limits investigators to a handful of species and excludes large amounts of data that might be useful, especially for coverage gaps in large-scale networks. By sampling in more “typical” forests, network density and species diversity would increase in ways that could potentially improve reconstructions. Ten nonclassical tree-ring chronologies derived from randomly selected trees, trees from logged forests, or both were compared to...

Native grass, forb, and shrub seed is needed to restore rangelands of the U.S. Intermountain West. Fernleaf biscuitroot [Lomatium dissectum (Nutt.) Mathias & Constance] is a desirable component of rangelands. Commercial seed production is necessary to provide the quantity and quality of seed needed for rangeland restoration and reclamation efforts. Fernleaf biscuitroot has been used for hundreds if not thousands of years in the western United States as a source of food and medicine. Knowledge about fernleaf biscuitroot is confined to ethnobotanical reports, evaluation of some of its...

In this project, we examined the views of 21 long-term employees on climate change in 14 Rocky Mountain Research Station Experimental Forests and Ranges (EFRs). EFRs were described by employees as uniquely positioned to advance knowledge of climate change impacts and adaptation strategies due to the research integrity they provide for long-term studies, the ability to host experimental treatments on the efficacy of adaptation actions, and the opportunity for long-term field observations to inform and improve research. Institutional commitment and capacity was identified by participants as...

We investigated the spatial variability of a number of wildland fuel characteristics for the major fuel components found in six common northern Rocky Mountain ecosystems. Surface fuel characteristics of loading, particle density, bulk density, and mineral content were measured for eight fuel components - four downed dead woody fuel size classes (1, 10, 100, 1000 hr), duff, litter, shrub, and herb - on nested plots located within sampling grids to describe their variability across spatial scales. We also sampled canopy bulk density, biomass, and cover for each plot in the grid. The spatial...

The thermoplastics within wood—plastic composites (WPCs) are known to experience significant time-dependent deformation or creep. In some formulations, creep deformation can be twice as much as the initial quasi-static strain in as little as 4 days. While extensive work has been done on the creep behavior of pure polymers, little information is available on the mechanical effects of mixing polymers with large amounts of woodbased or other bio-based fillers. As producers seek to develop structural WPC products that may be subjected to sustained loads, it is imperative that this creep...

Soil quality indices provide a means of distilling large amounts of data into a single metric that evaluates the soil's ability to carry out key ecosystem functions. Primarily developed in agroecosytems, then forested ecosystems, an index using the relation between soil organic matter and other key soil properties in more semi-arid systems of the Western US impacted by different geologic mineralization was developed. Three different sites in two different mineralization types, acid sulfate and Cu/Mo porphyry in California and Nevada, were studied. Soil samples were collected from undisturbe...