Treesearch

Cross-laminated timber (CLT) used in the U.S. is mainly imported from abroad. In the existing literature, however, there are data on domestic transportation, but little understanding exists about the environmental impacts from the CLT import. Most studies use travel distances to the site based on domestic supply origins. The new Adohi Hall building at the University of Arkansas campus, Fayetteville, AR, presents the opportunity to address the multimodal transportation with overseas origin, and to use real data gathered from transporters and manufacturers. The comparison targets the...

All 50 states offer preferential property tax programs that lower the taxes paid on enrolled agricultural and/or forest lands. While agroforestry is a land use that combines elements of both agriculture and forestry, eligibility criteria and other rules and regulations may prevent landowners from enrolling agroforestry practices in one or more of the agricultural and forestry tax programs. This pilot scale study developed conceptual and methodological frameworks to identify the current barriers to and opportunities in preferential tax policies applicable to agroforestry practices. We...

Headwater streams of the Pacific Northwest of North America are home to 52 amphibian species, spanning a diversity of taxa and life histories. Headwater stream-associated amphibians occur both within coldwater-stream channels and throughout adjacent riparian habitat, reflective of the important role of old-growth forests in providing cool, moist microclimates for these sensitive species. Forests of the Pacific Northwest have undergone substantial change over the last century, due to a legacy of resource extraction and ever-evolving forest management practices, as well as climate change....

There is a growing interest and investment in restoring riparian areas in the Pacific Northwest to protect biodiversity and water quality, and to restore quality habitat for threatened fish species. However, these management activities change vegetation conditions and potentially impact terrestrial species in these ecosystems. Our objective was to estimate associations between small mammals and 4 broad cover types—conifers, shrubs, grasses, and forbs—in riparian areas within the Blue Mountains of northeast Oregon, USA. We estimated abundances and spatial association for 10 small mammal...

Despite the ecological and socioeconomic impacts of wildfires, little attention has been paid to the spatiotemporal patterns of nighttime fire activity across the conterminous United States (CONUS). Daytime fire radiative power (FRP) detected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) was nearly evenly split (54% vs. 46%) between inside and outside wildfires from 2003 to 2020. In contrast, 94% of nighttime FRP was detected within wildfires, of which 95% was detected within large wildfires (> 2023 ha). Nighttime proportions (i.e., the proportion of total summed FRP...

Traditional population viability analysis (PVA) does not address the degree of measurement error or spatial and temporal variability of vital rate parameters, potentially leading to inappropriate conservation decision-making. We provide a methodology of applying Bayesian network (BN) modeling to PVA addressing these considerations, particularly for species with complex stage-class structures. We provide examples of three species from eastern Australia - hip pocket frog (Assa darilingtoni), squirrel glider (Petaurus norfolcensis) and giant burrowing frog (Heleioporus australiacus), comparing...

Bark and ambrosia beetles (Coleoptera: Curculionidae, Scolytinae) are a prominent group of insects that include important pest species,many ofwhich have successfully established outside their native range. Their cryptic nature and intimate association with bark and wood enable them to be accidentally transported within and among continents via trade of plants, timber, raw wood, wood products, and associated wood packaging materials. Furthermore, their resistance to dehydration and food deprivation and their thermal plasticity improves their likelihood of survival during long-distance...

The wildland-urban interface (WUI), where housing is in close proximity to or intermingled with wildland vegetation, is widespread throughout the United States, but it is unclear how this type of housing development affects public lands. We used a national dataset to examine WUI distribution and growth (1990–2010) in proximity to National Forests and created a typology to characterize each National Forest’s combination of WUI area and housing growth. We found that National Forests are hotspots for WUI growth, with a 38% increase in WUI area and 46% growth in WUI houses from 1990 to 2010,...

Bryophytes are largely responsible for globally significant carbon accumulation in peatland ecosystems. This accumulation is primarily caused by the slow decomposition of these mosses, which can be attributed to a combination of intrinsic (chemical) characteristics of decaying mosses and extrinsic (environmental) influences. Here we investigated the importance of intrinsic and extrinsic drivers of moss decomposition in peatlands and hypothesized that the early stages of decay will be driven primarily by intrinsic characteristics, while extrinsic drivers will become more important in the...