Treesearch

Early detection of White-nose Syndrome (WNS) of bats within winter hibernacula is essential for applying effective and timely disease-control measures. Recent evidence suggests that analysis of volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions from bats over time using electronic-nose (e-nose) devices has potential for monitoring Pd-infection status and WNS disease progress in individual cave bats following cave entry. An e-nose investigation of whole-body VOC emissions from Tricolored bats (Perimyotis subflavus), sampled noninvasively (without bat contact or handling) within 13 caves and 2 mines...

The National Woodland Owner Survey (NWOS) is implemented by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Forest Service, Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program, and is aimed at understanding the social context of the forests of the United States by looking into the attitudes, behaviors, and general characteristics of forest landowners and their land. The surveys cover all types of private forest ownerships, but reporting of results often focuses on families, individuals, trusts, estates, and family partnerships, collectively referred to as family forest ownerships. Survey results are...

Hunting is a popular recreational pursuit that can provide social, economic, and ecological benefits. It also serves as a primary tool for managing deer and elk populations. Yet hunter behavior—how different types of hunters (elk vs deer, rifle vs archery) use landscapes and the factors that influence hunting success—is seldom quantified. Scientists at the Starkey Experimental Forest and Range collected real-time data from tracking units worn by hunters to better understand their movements as well as how deer and elk respond to their presence. They found that hunters used a small portion...

Forest and biomass crops for bioenergy and bioproducts can promote a sustainable bioeconomy while effectively reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to mitigate global warming. One of the most concerning issues is selecting and using appropriate modeling and analytical technologies to optimize the benefits of multi-feedstock biomass supply chains, including logistics. Machine learning (ML) has been used to solve increasingly complex supply chain problems, providing powerful tools for sustainable forest management and biomass resource development. Existing research is extensive and spans...

Social and ecological conditions are constantly changing, but research concerning how visitors to wildlands perceive such changes across time is both limited and narrow. With a focus on the social settings of recreation experiences, this study provides an understanding of how perceptions of wildland visitors have changed over time. Specifically, across three time periods (1989, 1994, and 2022) within a wildland unit in Montana (USA), we found that preferences for encounters with other visitors remained relatively stable, levels of acceptable encounters (or thresholds) increased across time...

In Mediterranean climates, drought is recognized as the main abiotic stress negatively affecting plant survival and growth after establishment. However, several factors besides water scarcity interact to affect plant performance, including stocktype, field establishment techniques, environmental variability, and the inherent ecological requirements of the target species. To fully comprehend the extent each of these factors influences plant performance, we analyzed plant survival, growth, and physiological performance of contrasting stocktypes of Nothofagus glauca seedlings, a shade-intolera...

This report traces the flow of Idaho’s 2015 timber harvest through the primary wood products industry and characterizes the structure, capacity, and condition of Wyoming’s forest products sector. Trends in timber harvest, production, sawmill capacity, mill residuals, and sales value are presented. Employment and worker earnings in the State’s primary and secondary forest products industries are also discussed. Periodic survey data collected from the forest products industry provides detailed information on Idaho’s timber resources, wood utilization, and the economic contributions of the...

The European spruce bark beetle, Ips typographus(L.), is the most important forest pest in Europe due to the profound impacts of periodic outbreaks on ecosystem goods and services. Herein, we evaluated the responses of I. typographusto different doses of verbenone (SPLAT®Verb, 10% (−)-verbenone by weight; ISCA Inc., Riverside, CA, USA) in traps baited with its aggregation pheromones. Results are based on 1,492,289 I. typographuscollected in five experiments over 3 years. SPLAT®Verb inhibited the response of I. typographusto baited traps out to 14 m from the point of release (dollop) and...

For decades, researchers at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest have monitored nitrate levels in streams to better understand nitrogen cycling in forests. Researchers have reported that peaks in stream water nitrate levels often occur within months of single disturbance events, such as clearcutting or ice storms.

Arthropods contribute importantly to ecosystem functioning but remain understudied. This undermines the validity of conservation decisions. Modern methods are now making arthropods easier to study, since arthropods can be mass-trapped, mass-identified, and semi-mass-quantified into ‘many-row (observation), many-column (species)‘datasets, with homogeneous error, high resolution, and copious environmental-covariate information. These ‘novel community data sets’ let us efficiently generate information on arthropod species distributions, conservation values, uncertainty, and the magnitude and...