Treesearch

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...

Across the U.S.A., as across many countries, families, individuals, trusts, estates, and family partnerships, collectively referred to as family forest ownerships, own a plurality of the forestland. The Montreal Process Criteria and Indicators (C&I) were used to assess the sustainability of these lands. There are currently 109 million ha of family forestland across the conterminous U.S.A., but this area is decreasing by 1 million ha yr-1 with 64% of this acreage going to non-forest uses and the rest going to other forest ownership classes. While forest-type groups have remained relatively...

Harvested wood products found in the built environment are an important carbon sink, helping to mitigate climate change and their trends in use are determined by economic and demographic factors which vary spatially. Spatially detailed projections of construction and stored carbon are needed for industry and public decision making, including for appreciating trends in values at risk from catastrophic disturbances. We specify econometric models of single family and multifamily housing starts by U.S. Census Region, design a method for their spatial downscaling to the county level, and...

With global efforts to restore grassland ecosystems, researchers and land management practitioners are working to reconstruct habitat that will persist and withstand stresses associated with climate change. Part of these efforts involve movement of plant material potentially adapted to future climate conditions from native habitat or seed production locations to a new restoration site. Restoration practice often follows this plant-centered, topdown approach. However, we suggest that restoration of belowground interactions, namely between plants and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi or rhizobia,...

Both global poverty and hunger have increased in recent years, endangering progress towards accomplishing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 1 and 2. The regression has been most pronounced in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Meeting the SDG targets requires achieving resilient farm productivity. Although many farm management technologies exist to improve yields, farmers in SSA largely have not adopted these approaches. A long-standing literature about technology adoption identifies multiple hypotheses as to why farmers may or may not adopt new agricultural technologies, culminating in numerous...