Treesearch

Water availability and other site conditions influence poplar biomass productivity and affect clonal performance due to genotype × environment interactions. It is important to select genotypes with high water use efficiency (WUE) that maximizes yield with available amounts of water at sites, while avoiding drought stress and growth impacts to the trees. During drought, stomatal closure induces increased accumulation of δ13C carbon isotope in tree tissues, which is strongly correlated with WUE of trees and usually expressed through carbon isotope discrimination (Δ). Our primary objectives...

The wildland–urban interface (WUI) is the focus of many important land management issues, such as wildfire, habitat fragmentation, invasive species, and human–wildlife conflicts. Wildfire is an especially critical issue, because housing growth in the WUI increases wildfire ignitions and the number of homes at risk. Identifying the WUI is important for assessing and mitigating impacts of development on wildlands and for protecting homes from natural hazards, but data on housing development for large areas are often coarse. We created new WUI maps for the conterminous United States based on...

The WEPPcloud interface is a new online decision-support tool for the Water Erosion Prediction Project (WEPP) model that facilitates data preparation and model runs, and sum- marizes model outputs into tables and maps that are easily interpretable by users. The interface can be used by land and water managers in United States, Europe, and Australia inter- ested in simulating streamflow, sediment and pollutant loads from both undisturbed and disturbed (e.g. post-wildfire or post-treatment such as thinning or prescribed fires) forested watersheds. This article contains full hydrologic model...

Suspended sediment and nutrients following forest management activities or wildfires are transported to streams and lakes via surface runoff and are a major threat to water quality. Land and water managers resort to hydrologic models to test hypotheses that can help them make informed decisions to minimize disturbances and protect water resources. We present applications of an online interface, WEPPcloud, for the Water Erosion Prediction Project (WEPP) model as a pre- and post-disturbance management tool to model various gauged and ungauged forested watersheds throughout the western U.S....

Historically, grasslands with limited tree presence were embedded in a matrix of predominantly open oak and pine forests in the eastern United States. These open ecosystems mostly have been lost to other land uses, particularly agriculture, and also to closed forests under fire exclusion because frequent surface fire prevents tree encroachment. We located the potential extent of eastern fire-maintained grasslands by applying the random forests and C5.0 classifiers to determine the relationship between mapped areas of historical grasslands and topography and wind speed, which are proxies...

Borate solution was used to treat two sets of Douglas-fr wood samples, one by spraying cross-laminated timbers (CLT) and another set by dip-treating wood in solutions at different retentions. A novel model was developed to explain and predict borate uptake based on dip-treatment parameters. Small-scale CLT samples were prepared using commercial emulsion polymer isocyanate (EPI) and polyurethane (PU) adhesive with dip-treated wood. The effect of adhesive and borate retention on CLT samples were evaluated through adhesion, fire, termite, and decay tests. The adhesion strength of wood was...

The boreal forest is one of the largest biomes on Earth, occurring in the northern high latitude regions mostly between about 50°N and 65°N (Fig. 1). The biome is dominated by coniferous trees, often occurring as extensive areas of purespecies, even-aged stands regenerated from large, stand-replacing disturbances. Its northern extent lies along the tundra-taiga ecotone; on its southern extent, boreal forest types begin to transition to more temperate conifer species and a greater mix of hardwoods (Goldblum & Rigg, 2010; Montesano, Neigh, Macander, Feng,&Noojipady, 2020). Natural disturbance...

Woody biomass from short-rotation woody crops (SRWCs) plays a substantial role in feedstock production for alternative energy sources throughout the world, thus helping to mitigate climate change driven by excessive use of fossil fuels. The establishment of these biomass production systems presents the basis for more efficient development of renewable energy sources while avoiding impacts (e.g., additional emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere) on essential ecosystem services such as clean water and healthy soils. In addition to these bioenergy-related uses, the increase of...

Wildfire affects many types of communities and is a particular concern for communities in the wildland urban interface (WUI), such as those of Teton County, Wyoming. The core intent of this project was to provide evidence to support the Teton Area Wildfire Protection Coalition (TAWPC) and affiliated organizations in their wildfire mitigation and education programming. This report analyzes existing wildfire risk data collected in fall 2020 and pairs it with social data collected in the winter and spring of 2021, in order to better understand residents’ knowledge, experiences, and perceptions...

Deforestation continues at rapid rates despite global conservation efforts. Evidence suggests that governance may play a critical role in influencing deforestation, and while a number of studies have demonstrated a clear relationship between national-level governance and deforestation, much remains to be known about the relative importance of subnational governance to deforestation outcomes. With a focus on the Brazilian Amazon, this study aims to understand the relationship between governance and deforestation at the municipal level. Drawing on the World Bank Worldwide Governance Indicator...