Treesearch

Privately-owned forests provide important environmental, economic, and cultural benefits to the general public. Resulting impacts from landownership changes and conversion of working forests to other land uses threaten these benefits. The USDA Forest Service Forest Legacy Program (FLP) permanently protects threatened private forests that are of environmental, cultural, and economic importance to the greater public while keeping land ownership and forest management at the private or local level. FLP provides grants to state agencies to purchase conservation easements on private forestlands...

The hemlock woolly adelgid (Hemiptera: Adelgidae Adelges tsugaeAnnand) poses a serious threat to hemlocks in eastern North America, and ongoing research is focused on the identification and development of biological controls to protect and manage hemlock resources. Three predators native to the Pacific Northwest of North America that have been the focus of much research are Leucopis argenticollis(Zetterstedt), Leucopis piniperda(Malloch) (Diptera: Chamaemyiidae), and Laricobius nigrinus(Fender) (Coleoptera: Derodontidae). This study addresses the knowledge gap of adult Leucopisspp....

Resource selection is a key component in understanding the ecological processes underlying population dynamics, particularly for species such as northern bobwhite (Colinus virginianus), which are declining across their range in North America. There is a growing body of literature quantifying breeding season resource selection in bobwhite; however, winter information is particularly sparse despite it being a season of substantial mortality. Information regarding winter resource selection is necessary to quantify the extent to which resource requirements are driving population change. We...

Old-growth forests serve as critical habitat for many sensitive species, but management practices have diminished their prevalence, and former regions of old-growth are now dominated by second-growth stands lacking the structural heterogeneity, diversity, and species richness that these older forests possess. In western Washington state in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, the Olympic Habitat Development Study was designed to address this issue and hasten the development of specific old-growth features in second-growth stands using variable-density thinning. One concern with such...

This chapter considers social vulnerability to climate change by assessing the effects of climate change on outdoor recreation in the Sierra Nevada bioregion (Fischer et al. 2013) (fig. 5.1), and providing the information needed to manage for risk and to minimize loss (Aplet et al. 2010). By considering current and projected effects, we hope to better equip land managers and stakeholders with information that can aid management and planning for socioecological resilience. The report expands the emphasis on recreation provided in a recent science synthesis for the Sierra Nevada (Long et al....

Climate change is currently affecting ecosystems and natural resources in forest ecosystems across the Western United States (Dettinger et al. 2018, Halofsky and Peterson 2017, Wuebbles et al. 2017). To prepare for the effects of increasing temperatures and shifts in precipitation, resource managers working for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service (USFS) are currently mandated to integrate climate change information into decisionmaking during land management planning (USDA FS 2012). Climate change adaptation, or taking actions to reduce risks from changing climatic conditions...

The Sierra Nevada Infrastructure and Recreation Vulnerability Assessment and Adaptation Partnership (hereafter Sierra Nevada Partnership) contributed to our understanding of climate change vulnerabilities and responses to potential climate change effects in national forests in the Sierra Nevada (Modoc National Forest [NF], Lassen NF, Plumas NF, Tahoe NF, Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit, Eldorado NF, Stanislaus NF, Sierra NF, Inyo NF, Sequoia NF). The effort synthesized the best available scientific information to assess climate change vulnerability for recreation and infrastructure,...

The Equivalent Lateral Force (ELF) procedure is the most widely used seismic analysis approach, because of its simplicity and practicality in preliminary and final design phases. This paper applies the ELF procedure to a hypothetical building that stands 5 stories tall, with a 4-story superstructure supported on a rocking story of elliptically profiled cross-laminated timber (CLT) walls. First-generation prototypes made from six CLT panels of 5-ply, 175 mm, thickness—each measuring 2.44 m by 3.66 m in respective width and height—demonstrated that elliptical geometry controls lateral...

During the summer of 2019, seven stress-laminated deck timber bridges were evaluated to assess their field performance and serviceability. These bridges were originally constructed during a six year period (1988-1994) using hardwood lumber as part of a national program initiative in the USA. Its aim was to increase the use of wood in transportation structures primarily in the rural regions of the country. To assess bridge performance, comprehensive visual inspections were conducted and advanced inspection tools were utilized to accurately assess the bridge superstructure components using a...

Effcient wood production and utilization requires knowing the wood quality attributes of forest resources relevant to various end uses, prescribing appropriate silvicultural treatments that positively influence wood quality, and then, at the time of harvesting, sorting and allocating standing timbers to the most appropriate markets [1–3]. The field of forestry has many widely accepted field tools, sampling procedures, and models for gathering and summarizing data and making projections of growth, yield, and tree size; however, counterparts for wood quality assessment have lagged behind...