Treesearch

The forest products sector plays a critical role in the economic and social well-being of the United States. The country is the top producer and consumer of forest products, and it has the highest per capita industrial wood consumption. Nevertheless, the country’s forest area has not changed in over a century, owing in part to sound forest management practices and a strong tradition of wood utilization. Cyclical and long-term trends, such as the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009, changing consumer demand, globalization of manufacturing, and emergence of substitute materials, have had...

Invasive forest pests can cause environmental and economic damage amounting to billions of dollars (US) in lost revenues, restoration and response costs, and the loss of ecosystem services nationwide. Unfortunately, these forest pests do not stay confined to wildland forest areas and can spread into suburban and urban areas, imposing significant costs on local governments, homeowners, and management agencies. In this study, a contingent valuation experiment is used to estimate Florida residents’ willingness to pay (WTP) a monthly utility fee that would protect urban forests from invasive...

A conceptual framework for evaluation of climate effects on tree diseases is presented. Climate can exacerbate tree diseases by favouring pathogen biology, including reproduction and infection processes. Climatic conditions can also cause abiotic disease—direct stress or mortality when trees’ physiological limits are exceeded. When stress is sublethal, weakened trees may subsequently be killed by secondary organisms. To demonstrate climate's involvement in disease, associations between climatic conditions and disease expression provide the primary evidence of atmospheric involvement...

1.Topography affects abiotic conditions which can influence the structure, function and dynamics of ecological communities. An increasing number of studies have demonstrated biological consequences of fine‐scale topographic heterogeneity but we have a limited understanding of how these effects depend on the climate context. 2. We merged high‐resolution (1 m2 ) data on topography and canopy height derived from airborne lidar with ground‐based data from 15 forest plots in Puerto Rico distributed along a precipitation gradient spanning c. 800–3,500 mm/year. Ground‐based data included species...

Recreation and tourism on public lands benefit visitors through improved health, enjoyable experiences, and enrichment from our natural and cultural heritage. Public land managers play a critical role by providing opportunities for high-quality outdoor experiences while protecting ecosystems, recognizing cultural and historical connections, sustaining local economies, and promoting resilient communities. The challenge of stewarding public lands and meeting increasing public demands in an era of decreasing fiscal resources, conflicting public values, and significant environmental changes...

A fundamental precept of strategic foresight research is that there are multiple possible futures. These futures can be influenced by myriad social, environmental, economic, and technological trends and events. Strategic foresight research often employs horizon scanning methods to identify weak signals of change that have the potential to influence future conditions. There are also stronger, more overarching forces that have changed conditions in the past, are influencing the present, and are anticipated to continue to do so in the future.

This meeting was the 30th in a series of annual USDA Interagency Research Forums that are sponsored by the Forest Service, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, National Institute of Food and Agriculture, and Agricultural Research Service. The Group's original goal of fostering communication and providing a forum for the overview of ongoing research among the Agencies and their cooperators continues to be realized and facilitated through this meeting. This proceedings documents the efforts of many individuals: those who organized and sponsored the meeting, those who provided oral and...

Aim: We may be able to buffer biodiversity against the effects of ongoing climate change by prioritizing the protection of habitat with diverse physical features (high geodiversity) associated with ecological and evolutionary mechanisms that maintain high biodiversity. Nonetheless, the relationships between biodiversity and habitat vary with spatial and biological context. In this study, we compare how well habitat geodiversity (spatial variation in abiotic processes and features) and climate explain biodiversity patterns of birds and trees. We also evaluate the consistency of biodiversity–...

Lumbering of massive areas of old-growth forests provided a means to stabilize the economy of the South devastated by the Civil War. During the early 20th century, thousands of sawmill towns were created to meet the needs of the lumber industry and to provide employment for logging and mill workers. Primarily Whites and Blacks, but also other races and ethnic groups, came into sawmill towns and a new industrial society began to be developed. These sawmill towns provided employment in logging and milling crews, housing, medical care, education through the 7th grade, churches, and a commissar...

At two affiliate sites of the North American Long-Term Soil Productivity Study (Matlock, WA and Molalla, OR, USA), soil chemical properties and stand characteristics of planted coast Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii var. menziesii) were compared 15 years after forest harvesting and application of three logging-debris configurations (dispersed, piled, or removed) combined with either initial vegetation control (IVC; year 0) or annual vegetation control (AVC; years 0 to 5). At Matlock, soil carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) concentrations each were 17% greater after IVC than after AVC; at...