Treesearch

Each year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) Forest Service Forest Products Laboratory, Durability and Wood Protection research work unit (FS RWU 4723) installs and/or observes plots of soil treated with candidate termiticide products. These products may or may not be available to pest management professionals (PMPs) for application, depending on federal and state registration. This article reports on the latest results of these studies, and provides data for those products that have reached federal registration. Data provided are limited to label-approved rates of application...

Wheat straw was rapidly fractionated using maleic acid (MA) as an acid hydrotrope at atmospheric pressure under a range of conditions. MA hydrotropic fractionation (MAHF) was very selective in dissolving lignin and hemicelluloses resulting in a cellulose-rich water insoluble solids (WIS), which was evaluated for producing fibers through bleaching and cellulosic nanofibrils by fibrillation, as well as glucose through enzymatic saccharification. The residual lignin (RL) within the WIS has a low degree of condensation, which eased bleaching. The RL was also carboxylated through MAHF, which...

Litter decomposition is a key process for carbon and nutrient cycling in terrestrial ecosystems and is mainly controlled by prevailing environmental conditions, substrate quantity and quality as well as microbial community abundance and composition. In particular, the effects of climate and atmospheric nitrogen (N) deposition on litter decomposition and its temporal dynamics are of significant importance, since their effects might change over the course of the decomposition process. Within the TeaComposition initiative, we incubated Green and Rooibos teas at 524 sites across nine biomes....

While it is known that modifying the hydroxyls in wood can improve the decay resistance; what is often missing in the literature is whether these modifications alter wood nanostructure, and how these changes correlate to the improved decay resistance. Here, we used SANS to probe the effects of alkylene oxide modification on wood nanostructure. Southern pine wood samples were chemically modified to various weight percentage gains (WPG) using four different alkylene oxides: propylene oxide (PO), butylene oxide (BO), epichlorohydrin (EpH) and epoxybutene (EpB). After modification, the samples...

The northern Lake Huron shoreline in Michigan's Upper Peninsula has a largely east west orientation, extending from St. Ignace eastward to DeTour Village and then to neighboring Drummond Island (Fig. 1). Given this orientation, this shoreline intercepts large numbers of spring migrating birds after they fly across Lake Huron. These birds need to rest and refuel. For many of the insectivorous passerines or perching birds such as warblers (Fig. 2), vireos, and thrushes, they often arrive before the hardwood trees have fully leafed out and thus there are relatively few terrestrial insects...

Understanding why diversity sometimes limits disease is essential for managing outbreaks; however, mechanisms underlying this ‘dilution effect’ remain poorly understood. Negative diversity-disease relationships have previously been detected in plant communities impacted by an emerging forest disease, sudden oak death. We used this focal system to empirically evaluate whether these relationships were driven by dilution mechanisms that reduce transmission risk for individuals or from the fact that disease was averaged across the host community. We integrated laboratory competence measurements...

We investigated changes in soil chemistry and foliar metabolism of Himalayan cedar [Cedrus deodara (Roxb. Ex Lamb.) G.Don] and Himalayan spruce [Picea smithiana (Wall.) Boiss] trees along a steep elevational gradient in the lower Himalayan Mountains at Kufri, Himachal Pradesh (HP), India. The foliar and soil samples were collected from four locations along a 300 m elevational gradient at ridge, high-, mid-, and low-elevation sites within the forested ShimlaWater CatchmentWildlife Sanctuary that provides water for the city of Shimla, HP,. Observations at the time of sampling revealed that...

This is 1 of 23 guides to help Southeastern U.S. producers of economically important agricultural commodities build resilience to, prepare for, and recover from hurricane impacts. All guides can be found on the USDA Southeast Climate Hub Hurricane Preparation and Recovery Commodity Guides website.

Ecological forecasts will be best suited to inform intervention strategies if they are accessible to a diversity of decision-makers. Researchers are developing intuitive forecasting interfaces to guide stakeholders through the development of intervention strategies and visualization of results. Yet, few studies to date have evaluated how user interface design facilitates the coordinated, cross-boundary management required for controlling biological invasions. We used a participatory approach to develop complementary tangible and online interfaces for collaboratively forecasting biological...

The U.S. Forest Service is reconsidering policies that limit the size of trees that can be removed in the course of restoration treatments in dry forests of eastern Oregon. To evaluate the effects of diameter limits on the ability of managers to meet restoration objectives, we used an existing network of long-term research plots to summarize historical and contemporary structure and composition of mixed-conifer forests within a one million-ha study area in eastern Oregon. Then, we used a novel thinning simulation procedure to quantify the degree to which thinning using different diameter...