Treesearch

Falling trees and tree fragments are one of the top five causes of fatalities for wildland fire responders. In six out of ten recent years, at least one fatality from a tree strike has occurred while a fire responder was on duty, and others were injured. We used TreeMap, a national map of forest characteristics, including individual tree height, diameter, and status (live or dead), to generate a map of snag hazard for forested areas of the continental U.S. at 30 x 30 m resolution. Snag hazard was classified into categories of low, moderate, high, or extreme based on snag density and...

The Special Issue is aimed to link climate-change impacts on hydrological processes and water quality for local watersheds or basins. Emphases are on climate-induced water resource vulnerabilities (e.g., flood, drought, groundwater, evapotranspiration, and waterpollution) and methodologies (e.g., computer modeling, field measurement, and management practice) employed to mitigate and adapt climate-change impacts on water resources. In addition, application implications to water resource management were discussed in this Special Issue.

Forest change affects the relative magnitudes of hydrologic fluxes such as evapotranspiration (ET) and streamflow. However, much is unknown about the sensitivity of streamflow response to forest disturbance and recovery. Several physically based models recognize the different influences that overstory versus understory canopies exert on hydrologic processes, yet most input datasets consist of total leaf area index (LAI) rather than individual canopy strata. Here, we developed stratum-specific LAI datasets with the intent of improving the representation of vegetation for ecohydrologic...

Metrosideros polymorpha, Hawaiian common name ‘ōhi‘a, is the dominant tree of Hawaiian forests, comprising 80% of the native forests and 50% of all forests in the state (Owen et al., in press; US Department of Agriculture Forest Service, n.d.). ‘Ōhi‘a trees contain 41% of all live-tree carbon sequestered on these islands (Owen et al., in press; US Department of Agriculture Forest Service, n.d.). Many ‘ōhi‘a forests are almost monospecific in the canopy, although they support a diverse and largely endemic understory. ‘Ōhi‘a is one of the first woody species to colonize new lava flows and...

The use of biomass from forests by humans has been practiced since the dawn of time. Such practices have resulted in severe watershed degradation historically and in today’s world. As modern society seeks alternative energy sources, they are once again turning to forests, but now use mechanized harvesting systems to remove the biomass and transport it to processing or utilization sites. This study investigated the impacts of different mechanized biomass operations on sediment displacement, soil hydraulic conductivity, and canopy interception to determine if severe watershed impacts...

Several plant traits are associated with resistance to fire, thus fire-resistant species may give rise to more fire-resistant landscapes. However, upscaling from plant traits to landscape- and regional-scale fire effects remains a challenge.

The real‐world application of climate change adaptation practices in terrestrial wildlife conservation has been slowed by a lack of practical guidance for wildlife managers. Although there is a rapidly growing body of literature on the topic of climate change adaptation and wildlife management, the literature is weighted towards a narrow range of adaptation actions and administrative or policy recommendations that are typically beyond the decision space and influence of wildlife professionals. We developed a menu of tiered adaptation actions for terrestrial wildlife management to translate...

Wood identification is vitally important for ensuring the legality of North American hardwood value chains. Computer vision wood identification (CVWID) systems can identify wood without necessitating costly and time-consuming off-site visual inspections by highly trained wood anatomists. Previous work by Ravindran and colleagues presented macroscopic CVWID models for identification of North American diffuse porous hardwoods from 22 wood anatomically informed classes using the open-source XyloTron platform. This manuscript expands on that work by training and evaluating complementary...

Thin films with enhanced water repellence and mechanical strength can be fabricated from renewable lignocellulosic feedstocks as a replacement for petrochemical-derived synthetic polymers, such that it minimizes the life cycle impact on environment and human health. In this study, hybrid poplar wood was extracted with hot water at 160 ºC for 20 min (HWE-20), 60 min (HWE-60) and 90 min (HWE-90), and then dissolved in 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium acetate to fabricate thin films of varying chemical composition and properties. The HWE-90 films were enriched in lignin by 74%, along with enhanced...