Treesearch

A major challenge in landscape modeling is to effectively visualize and analyze a massive amount of simulation outputs, which usually are in various raster and vector geospatial data formats. Because the task is often time-consuming and costly, available handy data viewers are limited. Yet, it is a useful tool for land managers to prepare and deploy their management plan in a landscape scale. Here, we upgraded our previous LANDISVIEW (version 1.0) to significantly enhance both visualizing and analyzing four major raster and vector geospatial data formats: ERDAS GIS/ASCII Raster (gis/.asc),...

Salmon-derived nutrients (SDN) are a distinctive aquatic subsidy to terrestrial ecosystems. Streamwater nutrient increases in response to SDN have been documented but uncertainties about the magnitude and persistence of their effects in riparian areas remain. A key research gap is the response of specific soil types to the nutrient subsidy over time. To address this question, an Entisol and a Spodosol commonly found in riparian zones of Southeast Alaska were delineated adjacent to streams with abundant spawning salmon for experimental nutrient additions. Salmon nutrient additions were...

A survey of motorcyclists was conducted to determine their perception of the quality of views from roads of a managed, rural southern United States landscapes in the winter season. The survey instrument was made available through an advertisement placed in an email newsletter delivered to the members of a motorcyclist organization. While the potential number of respondents was very high, the response rate to the survey was low. We found that respondents generally preferred landscape views with water in the forefront. Landscapes with agricultural land or pasture in the forefront and forest...

Alley cropping is an agroforestry system in which annual crops are grown in alleys between rows of woody perennials for timber or other products, which can provide ecosystem services and help farmers diversify outputs. But is alley cropping a financially viable alternative to monocropping? To answer this question, a Monte Carlo model of financial risk and returns was used to understand how this diversification of outputs might help farmers in the southeast United States adapt to future scenarios in which agriculture or forestry may become more risky due to a changing climate or other...

Globally, prescribed fire, harvesting, and understory mastication, alone and in combination, are common forest management practices. Timber commodities, wildlife habitat, wildfire fuel reduction, soil conservation, and water quality are frequently targeted and assessed as these practices are utilized. In the 1960s, a study of paired, first-order watersheds was established in coastal South Carolina, USA, to evaluate the long-term impacts of forest management (i.e. prescribed fire, thinning, mastication of understory vegetation) on water quantity and quality. Following Hurricane Hugo in...

Forests, estimated to contain two thirds of the world’s biodiversity, face existential threats due to illegal logging and land conversion. Efforts to combat illegal logging and to support sustainable value chains are hampered by a critical lack of affordable and scalable technologies for field-level inspection of wood and wood products. To meet this need we present the XyloTron, a complete, self-contained, multi-illumination, field-deployable, open-source platform for field imaging and identification of forest products at the macroscopic scale. The XyloTron platform integrates an imaging...

The use of less-toxic solvents is highly desirable for biopolymer processing and applications to meet sustainability while alleviating environmental burdens. In this study, chitin was propionylated to improve its solubility. The highly propionylated chitin exhibited considerably improved solubility (up to 96%) in a binary ethanol/water solution as compared to almost insolubility in a single solvent (either ethanol or water). Transparent films were prepared with acidified solutions and possessed excellent mechanical properties with a tensile strength up to 40MPa and Young’s modulus of...

Unlike loblolly pine (Pinus taeda L.), shortleaf pine (Pinus echinata Mill.) seedlings often resprout following topkill from fire because the basal crook their stem produces places dormant buds at the soil surface which insulates them. The primary goal of our study was to compare resprouting following fire of shortleaf pine and loblolly pine with dormant buds placed at three depths: 2 cm above soil surface, at soil surface, and 2 cm below soil surface. We also compared resprouting of containerized versus bare-root shortleaf pine. Seedlings were planted near Idabel, OK, and burned after 1...

Quercus species are ecologically and economically important components of deciduous forests of the eastern United States. However, knowledge pertinent to a thorough understanding of acorn germination dynamics for these species is lacking. The objectives of this research were to determine dormancy break and germination requirements for acorns of two eastern United States bottomland species, Quercus nigra and Quercus phellos (Section Lobatae), and to present results within ecological and phylogenetic contexts. Three replicates of 50 acorns of each species received 0 (control), 6, 12 or 18...