Treesearch

The Northern Rocky Mountains region includes 42 million acres of forest land which is diverse in landownership, management objectives, tree species, site productivities, disturbance regimes, and silvicultural practices resulting in a mosaic landscape. Substantial changes in landownership, management objectives, markets, policy, forest conditions, and silvicultural practices have occurred over the last thirty years. This review provides a synopsis of these changes across different forest types in the region. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service remains the largest forest...

Understanding how species-specific traits and density-dependent competition modulate the effects of extreme climate events is essential for informing future forest management strategies. We analyzed the radial growth of western larch (Larix occidentalis) and Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii var. glauca) trees growing in unmanaged old-growth stands — and western larch grown at two experimentally controlled densities — at four sites across western Montana, USA. Differences in leaf habit (deciduous vs. evergreen) and divergent water use strategies (anisohydric vs. isohydric) of western...

Everwet tropical forests, defined by the absence of a pronounced dry season, are globally significant carbon sinks, covering roughly 80% of Southeast Asian tropical forests, 30% of the Amazon basin, and 10% of the Congo Basin. Yet the climatic drivers of stem radial growth in these ecosystems remain understudied. The prevailing hypothesis is that growth is primarily light‐limited, as persistent cloud cover constrains photosynthesis. Evaluating this assumption is critical as climate projections for the humid tropics point towards rising atmospheric evaporative demand, episodic drought, and...

Fire is a disturbance that alters nutrient cycling, but its legacy is often reduced to shifts in carbon (C), nitrogen (N), and phosphorus (P). This C:N:P paradigm overlooks the vast suite of other elements critical to decomposer organisms. Post-fire changes in the abiotic environment—especially when interacting with co-occurring stressors such as ultraviolet (UV) radiation—may reorganize the entire multi-element stoichiometric network within litter, yet the direct implications for arthropod decomposer communities remain largely unknown.In a 469-day factorial field experiment in a subtropica...

Connections in mass timber buildings degrade during fire due to charring and temperature-dependent material reduction, leading to significant fastener deformation. This study develops a temperature-dependent Beam-on-Foundation (BoF) formulation for CLT balloon-frame connections exposed to the WOODWISE large-scale compartment fire. The ambient-temperature BoF model was first validated against embedment and single-shear tests from the literature, followed by development and validation of a heat transfer model using thermocouple data from WOODWISE Test #3. The validated temperatures were...

Intumescent paints could be used in exterior applications and provide beneficial fire protection for structures located in wildfire-prone areas if the paints were more durable to weathering. A limited number of studies have evaluated the effectiveness of intumescent paints on wood post-weathering, and they have shown that the service life is relatively short, on the order of about one year. None of the previous studies assessed the effects of applying multiple coatings, including an acrylic latex color, bonding primer, and acrylic topcoat, over an intumescent paint. The effects of proper...

Domestic selection creates the assemblages of organisms found in human-dominated environments, and urban forestry is a useful illustration of this process in action. In this study, we aim to understand how the process of domestic selection influences the nursery supply chain of trees to Baltimore, Maryland, USA. We interviewed actors in the supply chain to ask how they make decisions about which trees to grow, sell, select, and plant. We find tension between prioritizing diversity (at the species or genetic level) and other factors such as planting site conditions, esthetics, availability,...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Forest Service, Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program provides this resource update yearly as an overview of forest resources in South Carolina. These estimates are derived from field data collected across a systematic network of fixed-radius forest monitoring plots located on both public and private land. New updates are provided annually as a subset of plots within the State are remeasured. Each year, field crews visit and measure a subset of all FIA plots across the entire State (the size of the subset varies by State and year). Combining...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Forest Service, Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program provides this resource update yearly as an overview of forest resources in Maryland. These estimates are derived from field data collected across a systematic network of fixed-radius forest monitoring plots located on both public and private land. New updates are provided annually as a subset of plots within the State are remeasured. Each year, field crews visit and measure a subset of all FIA plots across the entire State (the size of the subset varies by State and year). Combining all...

When wood is exposed to elevated temperatures (greater than 37 °C or 100 °F), its strength and stiffness can be degraded. The National Design Specifications for wood construction contain reduction factors for mechanical properties of wood and engineered wood used in these situations. These reduction factors were based on experiments where wood and engineered wood were conditioned at high temperatures. Since these experiments were conducted, adhesive formulations used in structural composite lumber have changed. This work compared strength properties of laminated veneer lumber made with...