Treesearch

The SCS-CN (curve number) and the Rational Method are widely used for quantifying direct runoff and peak discharge rates for designing road cross-drainage and water management structures in agricultural and urban landscapes. However, the studies applying and evaluating these methods are very limited for forest lands. Here we suggest that validating and possibly improving these tools and their parameters using long-term hydro-climatic and high resolution LIDAR and imagery data from US Forest Service experimental forest watersheds and similar other sites in varying ecoregions can help fill...

Partnerships between researchers and restoration practitioners can improve restoration outcomes, which is especially important for restoration in challenging settings. Here, we describe one such partnership in the Great Basin, United States, which used trait‐based methods and practitioner knowledge to identify the most promising seed sources for restoration. Managers in this region can either use widely‐available commercial seeds, which are often sourced from far outside the seeding area, or take extra steps to use locally collected seeds. We asked whether wild‐collected seeds of two...

Atypical and poorly understood attacks by Dendroctonus rufipennis (Kirby) to Pinus contorta Doug. ex Loudon were detected in the southern Rocky Mountains (SRM). The phenomenon is confirmed across all examined area. Its reproduction is described for the first time as well as the first attacks of D. adjunctus Blandf. in that host. Improved detection and diagnostics of D. rufipennis will allow a simpler, and efficient identification of the species. It will improve the detection capacity by pest detection specialists and entomologists, which will increase our understanding of the phenomena...

For centuries, western white pine (Pinus monticola) dominated moist forests of the northern Rocky Mountains. The fast-growing species, which can reach heights of 150 feet, was once an economic driver in the region. However, not much of the former forest remains. A combination of blister rust, beetles, and logging severely reduced the range of white pine during the 20th century. Managers have traditionally used large clearcuts followed by broadcast burning to grow western white pine and other early seral species. While this approach can be an effective and efficient way to get white pine on...

Fundamental pyrolysis thermal and kinetics properties for live vegetation that are essential to CFD modeling of pyrolysis and flammability were obtained from a series of small-scale tests for live and dead vegetation. The complexity of live leaf composition was recently documented allowing analysis of 12 crude compounds. Model simplification required a practical grouping into contents of (0) moisture, (1) lipids, (2) digestives (glucose, fructose, and protein), (3) hemicellulose (xylan and pectin), (4) glucan (cellulose and starch), (5) phenolic (lignin and tannins), and (6) inert (silicate...

A wealth of forensic wood identifcation technologies has been developed or improved in recent years, with many attempts to compare results between technologies. The utility of such comparisons is greatly reduced when the species tested with each technology are diferent and when performance metrics are not calculated or presented in the same way. Here, a species-level XyloTron computer vision model is presented along with a side-by-side comparison for species- and genus-level identifcation of the 10 species of Meliaceae studied by Deklerck et al. using mass spectrometry. The species-level...

Quantifying the cell wall polymers in wood and plants has been a tremendous challenge because no single method can achieve absolute quantification of any cell wall polymer. Two-dimensional NMR spectroscopic techniques have advanced this area with the introduction of wood dissolution and cryogenically cooled probes, allowing for semi-quantification. However, a more robust technique had to be developed to allow for a more absolute quantification of cell wall polymers. This study explored a multifaceted approach to accurately quantify lignin methoxyls using gas chromatography and mass...

Moso bamboo is widespread in natural forests and is cultivated over large areas in China. This study investigated how climate controls its distribution, about which little is known. We collected moso bamboo presence-absence data from 674 sites with long-term climate data in Mainland China. Generalized additive models that included location and climate variables were used to test the effects of these predictors on the species’ occurrence. We identified the best model as the one with the lowest Akaike’s Information Criterion value that contained only statistically significant predictors. We...

The Forest Service’s Forest Inventory and Analysis Program (FIA) is the primary source of information about our Nation’s forests’ status and trends. Built on a statistically robust sampling network of permanent forest inventory and monitoring plots, the program has created a framework upon which a diverse variety of scientific studies have been built. An FIA Science Stakeholder Meeting was held November 19-21st, 2019 in Knoxville, TN, to bring together FIA personnel, researchers from peer organizations, academia, policymakers, and members of the international scientific community under the...

Globally, more carbon is stored in the soil than in any other terrestrial form (Brevik 2013; Woodall et al. 2015). Soil organic carbon (SOC) may contain more than three times the carbon found in the atmosphere and terrestrial vegetation combined (Qafoku 2014). Soil organic carbon is derived from soil organic matter (i.e., decomposition of living organisms) and is generally about 58 percent of soil organic matter by weight (Pribyl 2010). Storage of SOC is limited by soil physical and chemical composition as well as microbial and plant community types, all of which are determined by soil...