Treesearch

In November, the aggregate (month-over-month and year-over-year) U.S. housing market indicators were positive. November housing data denoted the second consecutive month of total starts greater than 1.5-million units. The single-family subsector is the primary source of the current uptrend and is progressively gaining momentum. Month-over-month data yielded decreases in four categories: total and multifamily completions, new single-family and existing sales. Similarly, year-over-year data indicated declines for multifamily starts and permits, and total and single-family completions....

December housing data denoted the second consecutive month of total starts greater than 1.5 million units. For the fourth consecutive month, total starts exceeded their 61-year historical average. Further, single-family starts were the greatest since September 2006 (1,384,000 units). Aggregate (month-over-month and year-over-year) U.S. housing market data also were positive. The single-family subsector is the primary source of the current uptrend and is progressively gaining momentum. Month-over-month data yielded decreases in three categories: aggregate multifamily starts and permits, and...

Supporting wildfire management activities is frequently identified as a benefit of forest roads. As such, there is a growing body of research into forest road planning, construction, and maintenance to improve fire surveillance, prevention, access, and control operations. Of interest here is how road networks directly support fire control operations, and how managers incorporate that information into pre-season assessment and planning. In this communication we briefly review and illustrate how forest roads relate to recent advances in operationally focused wildfire decision support. We...

Wildfires have important effects on wildlife habitat. Within fire perimeters, ‘fire refugia’ are unburned or less severely burned areas that contain residual pre-fire habitat structures and facilitate species persistence following fire. However, fire refugia may vary in their relative quality. The ability to evaluate the relative quality of fire refugia for wildlife habitat may help efficiently allocate resources for post-fire conservation planning, especially for at-risk species. Using spatial overlays of habitat models and burn severity data, we developed the refugia index, a flexible...

The distribution of fuels is recognised as a key driver of wildland fire behaviour. However, our understanding of how fuel density heterogeneity affects fire behaviour is limited because of the challenges associated with experiments that isolate fuel heterogeneity from other factors. Advances in fire behaviour modelling and computational resources provide a means to explore fire behaviour responses to fuel heterogeneity. Using an ensemble approach to simulate fire behaviour in a coupled fire-atmosphere model, we systematically tested how fuel density fidelity and heterogeneity shape...

A continual improvement of our understanding about factors that influence tree regeneration is needed to inform landscape-scale restoration efforts across the western USA. This is increasingly important because changing climate and disturbance regimes will influence where restoration efforts should be implemented across landscapes. In this study, we used Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) data to model ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa C. Lawson var. scopulorum Engelm.) seedling presence across FIA plots in Arizona and New Mexico, USA. Additionally, we analyzed archived soil samples from...

Forest classifications by disturbance permit designation of multiple types of both old growth forests and shorter-lived forests, which auto-replace under severe disturbance, and also identification of loss of the disturbance type and associated forest. Historically, fire and flooding disturbance regimes, or conversely, infrequent disturbance, produced unique forests such as disturbanceindependent forests of American beech (Fagus grandifolia), eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis), and sugar maple (Acer saccharum) in the Eastern United States. However, disturbance has changed to primarily...

The first research on acetylation of wood started in 1928, and the first research done on acetylation of wood at the USDA Forest Service Forest Products Laboratory (FPL) started in 1945. This is a review of the research done between 1945 and 1966 at the FPL. This research was the first to show that acetylated wood was both decay-resistant and dimensionally stable. It was the pioneering research that ultimately led to the commercial production of acetylated wood.

This paper examines the strength of wood adhesive bonds at high temperatures. The goal of this research is to better understand the conditions of heat delamination in cross laminated timber (CLT) that is exposed to fire. Heat delamination in CLT occurs when one lamination detaches from the composite panel before the char front reaches the bondline. Timber that falls from the panel, as a result of delamination, contributes additional fuel to the fire, which can cause fire regrowth, while the loss of a lamination causes a sudden loss in strength. Currently, to demonstrate that an adhesive...

This research presents the development of a mass timber buckling restrained brace (T-BRB) that combines a low yield strength steel core with a mass timber casing to create a new ductile fuse. The T-BRB is an essential element of a mass timber buckling restrained braced frame (BRBF), which is a promising mass timber wood lateral force–resisting system. Critical elements of T-BRB design that are important for good performance include casing stiffness, casing material, number and spacing of bolts, timber spacer and casing gap, steel core yield strength, and friction between steel core and...