Treesearch

One of the less interrogated aspects of corrugated packaging are scoring and scoring profiles, the intentional localized crushing of flutes to accommodate package folding and closure. This study explores the effect of scoring parameters on box compression test strength (BCT) of two balanced corrugated boards.Scoring differences produced BCT that varied by 10% for one board and less for the other board. Parameters from 4-point bending of scored specimens showed some correlation with BCT, while eccentricity and torsion parameters had less correlation. Different scores produced BCT differences...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service faces unique requirements to consider potential future demand for Tongass National Forest timber in their periodic land management planning efforts. In support of this need, the Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station has completed five prior timber demand analyses for southeast Alaska to assist with meeting statutory requirements to estimate planning-cycle demand for Tongass National Forest timber. Using the materials balance model (used in prior analyses) and updated harvest figures, mill production data, and export volumes,...

Non-native and native invasive defoliators can decrease recreation visitor enjoyment. We use data on observed recreation visitation to investigate the impact of spongy moth, Lymantria dispar L. (Lepidopetra: Erebidae) outbreak events. Spongy moth is a polyphagous defoliator pest that emerges in the early spring and feeds through the summer months. Caterpillar feeding can completely defoliate trees during outbreaks, sometimes resulting in tree mortality. We gathered data on defoliation events in U.S. National Parks and estimated a fixed effects regression model with lags to estimate the...

Lignocellulose, found in plant cell walls, is primarily composed of cellulose, hemicelluloses, and lignin. Lignin is the largest renewable source of aromatics on Earth. Understanding the composition and structure of lignocellulose is essential for elucidating the molecular architecture of plant cell walls and chemical features governing polymer interactions, but lignocellulose is arranged in a complex matrix that resists dissolution and structural analysis.

Historical records show that over a century ago, fire-tolerant oaks dominated more than half of the forests across Kentucky and the southern Appalachian Mountains. Today, they account for barely a fifth. Species that historically occupied the margins, including red maple, eastern redcedar, and yellow poplar, have moved to the center. Ecologically, the shift happened relatively fast. Understanding why, and what it means for management, is aided by going back to the forest composition assessments produced by the U.S. Geological Survey and Forest Service surveyors in the early 1900s, before...

Global warming is widely expected to intensify the hydrological cycle. However, observational evidence for accelerated evapotranspiration (ET), a key terrestrial water cycle and energy balance component, remains ambiguous. Here, we constrained diverse datasets using basin-scale ET estimates covering 47% of global land to reveal a hidden asymmetry. We found a small global change in ET [−0.06 ± 0.44 mm year −2 (millimeters per year squared), P > 0.10] from 2000 to 2022, resulting from strongly opposing hemispheric trends. The Northern Hemisphere shows noticeable ET increases (0.91 ± 0.46 mm...

Land use and land cover changes, especially urbanization, can strongly alter coupled water and energy cycles, intensifying urban heat island effects, stormwater runoff, and flood risk. Process-based land surface models provide an important tool for quantifying these interactions in heterogeneous landscapes with mixed urban, grassland, and forest cover where direct observations are limited. However, few studies have evaluated how models designed for regional-scale applications perform across scales from small watersheds to a broader urban–rural interface. Here, we diagnostically assessed...

Our analysis of 61 versions of the Great Basin (GB) Indigenous oral-history narrative, Theft of Pine Nuts , provides valuable new paleoecological insights into late Pleistocene (LP) and Holocene biogeography of pinyon pine ( Pinus monophylla ). Pinyon homelands indicated by Indigenous sources were located not only within the current pinyon distribution but also north of the known range, in northern California and Nevada, southern Oregon and Idaho, and western Wyoming. These extramarginal pinyon locations corroborate and expand a Western science hypothesis that proposed LP or Early Holocene...

Multi-aged stands dominated by ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) once occupied large areas of the American west at low to mid elevations. Much of this forest type is now even-aged after regenerating from past high-severity disturbance (i.e., wildfire or even-aged harvesting) or is transitioning toward even-aged structure in the absence of natural disturbance processes. Although even-aged forests are well-suited to a subset of management objectives and sites, multi-aged forest structures are often better aligned with the multi-objective framework under which public forestland is commonly...

Ambient acoustic conditions shape how animals perceive and interact with their environments, yet their role in structuring space use remains underexplored. Noise can mask biologically informative sounds which can impact foraging success, physiological fitness, and displace animals from viable habitat. Here, we test how landscape variables and soundscape characteristics across a mixed-use forest landscape affect spatial distribution of a nocturnal predator with specialized hearing. We used passive acoustic recordings to assess the effects of noise levels within biologically relevant...