Treesearch

Traditional forestry, ecology, and fuels monitoring methods can be costly and error-prone, and are often used beyond their original assumptions due to difficulty or unavailability of more appropriate methods. These traditional methods tend to be rigid and may not be useful for detecting new ecological changes or required data at modern levels of precision. The integration of Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) methods into forest monitoring strategies can cost effectively standardize data collection, improve efficiency, and reduce error, with datasets that can easily be analyzed to better...

The month-over-month housing data for May were varied, and all data were positively robust year-over-year in all categories. Declines were reported for total-, single-, and multifamily permits; total- and single-family completions; and existing house sales.

Infrastructure systems have direct implications for how health and well-being evolve across urban–rural systems. Scientists, practitioners, and policy-makers use domain-specific methods and tools to characterize sectors of infrastructure, but these approaches do not capture the cascading effects across interrelated infrastructure and governance domains. We argue that the development and management of sustainable urban infrastructure must focus on interactions across urban and rural places to advance equitable health and well-being. We call for a research agenda that focuses on urban–rural...

We show that aerial tips are self-similar fractals of whole shrubs and present a field method that applies this fact to improves accuracy and precision of biomass estimates of tall-shrubs, defined here as those with diameter at root collar (DRC) ≥ 2.5 cm. Power function allometry of biomass to stem diameter generates a disproportionate prediction error that increases rapidly with diameter. Thus, biomass should be modeled as a single measure of stem diameter only if stem diameter is less than a threshold Dmax. When stem diameter exceeds Dmax, then the stem internode should be treated as a...

Soy flour was evaluated as a partial substitute for resin in the manufacture of oriented strand board (OSB), a wood-based composite that often replaces solid lumber and plywood in structural applications in the construction industry. Since the presence of soy could alter OSB biodegradation properties, termite resistance of OSB panels made with 0, 10, and 20 percent of polymeric methylene diphenyl diisocyanate (pMDI) resin substituted with soy flour (OSB0, OSB10, and OSB20, respectively) was investigated. Single choice tests between three types of OSB and southern yellow pine (SYP) solid...

Elastic modulus and hardness are commonly measured using nanoindentation. Calculating these properties from measured force–displacement curves typically requires knowledge of the contact depth of the indenter into the specimen. However, surface detection methods in many nanoindentation experiments can lead to an error in the contact depth measurement and, subsequently, the measured properties. Here, the contributions of elastic and plastic deformations to surface detection errors in nanoindentation experiments are examined through experiments and modeling. The model is used to quantify...

This study aims to investigate the feasibility of CLT panels fabricated from salvaged dead standing trees after the beetle outbreak by evaluating the flexural and shear properties through mechanical tests and computational analysis. White spruce (Picea glauca (Moench) Voss) lumber salvaged from the dead and dying trees resulting from recent spruce budworm (Choristoneura fumiferana (Clem.)) activity were used to fabricate Cross-laminated timber (CLT) panels of three categories in terms of tree conditions: Category I─ live; Category II─ recently dead; and Category III─ dead for some time. A...

Forward thinking conservation-planning can benefit from modeling future landscapes that result from multiple alternative management scenarios. However, long-term landscape modeling and downstream analyses of modeling results can lead to massive amounts of data that are difficult to assemble, analyze, and to report findings in a way that is easily accessible to decision makers. In this study, we developed a decision support process to evaluate modeled forest conditions resulting from five management scenarios, across 100 years in California’s Lake Tahoe basin; to this end we drew upon a...

Effective forest management, particularly during forest disturbance events, requires timely and accurate monitoring information at appropriate spatial scales. In Hawai‘i, widespread ‘ōhi‘a (Metrosideros polymorpha Gaud.) mortality associated with introduced fungal pathogens affects forest stands across the archipelago, further impacting native ecosystems already under threat from invasive species. Here, we share results from an integrated monitoring program based on high resolution (<5 cm) aerial imagery, field sampling, and confirmatory laboratory testing to detect and monitor ‘ōhi‘a...

To promote the sustainability of forest ecosystems and maintain ecosystem services to human populations in the context of climate change, forest managers are considering several adaptation tools. One of those, assisted migration, consists of displacing tree species and/or populations to locations with suitable future climate conditions. Assisted migration plantations, however, could fail to produce viable forests under high herbivory pressure from mammalian herbivores. Thus, selecting species and genotypes with low susceptibility to herbivores could be a key condition for the recruitment...