Treesearch

Recent years have witnessed a growing number of stories about extreme wildfires that have had significant social impacts, from Australia to Portugal to California. Although this has heightened the call to find ways to better “coexist with fire,” it must be recognized that wildfire-human interactions are as old as humanity itself. Humans around the world have ignited and used fire as a basic tool for millennia; people have and continue to use confined fires for a range of quotidian reasons including cooking, heating, and processing of materials (e.g., in the production of brick, ceramics,...

Recovery after a wildfire is a process, both at the community or larger scale and for individuals. The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) defines recovery as, “The restoring or improving of livelihoods and health, as well as economic, physical, social, cultural and environmental assets, systems and activities, of a disaster-affected community or society, aligning with the principles of sustainable development and ‘build back better’, to avoid or reduce future disaster risk.” Despite the growing wildfire social science literature and increasing impacts of wildfires...

Fire is a natural process that has shaped the history of Earth long before human presence; imagining a “world without fires is like a sphere without roundness” ([1], p.599). Evidence that massive and intense fires naturally occurred throughout the Holocene [1e3] demonstrates that extreme wildfires events (EWEs) are not a recent reality. Although many ecosystems are resilient to such intense fires (e.g., in Yellowstone Park, within the first decade after the fire occurred in 1988, plant and animal communities were well on their way to their pre-fire composition; [3a]), recent tragic fires...

Severe wildfire can affect many soil processes, especially organic matter (OM) decomposition. Organic mulches are often applied on steep slopes to mitigate soil erosion, but little is known about how these surface organic additions affect subsequent soil OM decomposition. In 2003 the Cedar Fire burned 110,000 ha in southern California chaparral shrubland, after which hydromulch was aerially applied to reduce soil erosion. Subsequently, we established a 5-year study to assess the effect of hydromulch on OM decomposition at the burned soil surface and in the mineral soil using aspen (Populus...

Forest restoration thinning in Chinese pine (Pinus tabuliformis) plantations can alter stand structure and soil abiotic properties, which have the potential to change biotic properties such as wood-inhabiting fungal community structure. Therefore, three thinning treatments (30%, 41% and 53% of the standing biomass removed) and an unthinned control stand were established at stand age 35 to determine the effects on surface and mineral soil wood-inhabiting fungi. Chinese pine, loblolly pine (Pinus taeda), and trembling aspen (Populus tremuloides) wood stakes were placed horizontally on the...

Small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) offer key benefits over manned aircraft and satellite platforms used for remote sensing research, such as high spatial resolution, portability, simplicity of implementing ground control, affordability, and lack of reliance upon third-party imagery providers. Mountainous areas, which we define as locations that are higher than 2500 m in elevation and that contain slopes greater than 25°, pose a number of challenges to sUAS mapping operations that other environments do not, including reduced aircraft performance, cold temperatures, high winds, and...

Phellinus noxius, the cause of brown root-rot disease, is an invasive fungal pathogen that causes a white rot among woody plants in Asia, Oceania, and Africa. Because the origin and diversity of this pathogen are unknown, it is difficult to predict its behavior and invasive capacity, especially under future climatechange scenarios. We characterized genetic relationships and ecological differences among P. noxius lineages across eastern Asia and Oceania to better understand evolutionary responses of the pathogen to environmental changes. Sequences of four loci (nuclear large subunit,...

Pacific Northwest policy makers are excited about the emergence of mass timber into U.S. construction markets as the product potentially creates local manufacturing jobs while utilizing Douglas fir growing sustainably in the region. This study assessed regional economic impacts generated by mass timber high-rise construction in Oregon. Economic impact estimates were derived using a regionally specific input-output model combined with analysis-by-parts methodology. Financial data from Portland’s 12-story Framework building, estimated using RSMeans software, provided purchasing information....

Brown rot (BR) decay mechanisms employ carbohydrate-active enzymes (CAZymes) as well as a unique non-enzymatic chelator-mediated Fenton (CMF) chemistry to deconstruct lignocellulosic materials. Unlike white rot fungi, BR fungi lack peroxidases for lignin deconstruction, and also lack some endoglucanase/cellobiohydrolase activities. The role that the CMF mechanism plays in “opening up” the wood cell wall structure in advance of enzymatic action, and any interaction between CMF constituents and the selective CAZyme suite that BRs possess, is still unclear. Expression patterns for CMF redox...

In April, the vast majority of month-over-month and year-over-year categories were negative. The substantial declines are attributed to the impact of the Covid-19 virus. On a month-over-month basis, single-family under construction and new single-family sales were positive. Year-over-year, total multifamily housing under construction and private residential and single-family construction spending indicated improvement.