Life Sciences Commons^™

Transient Physiological Responses Of Planting Frozen Root Plugs Of Douglas-Fir Seedlings, M. Anisul Islam, Douglass F. James, Kent G. Apostol, A. Kasten Dumroese

USDA Forest Service / UNL Faculty Publications

Short-term physiological responses of planting frozen (FR) and rapidly thawed (TR) root plugs of Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga rnenziesii (Mirb.) Franco) seedlings were examined through time series (0 h, 6 h, 12 h, 1 day, 3 days, and 7 days) measurements in two separate experiments: 10 °C day : 6 °C night, RH 75% and 30 °C day : 20 °C night, RH 50%, respectively. Net photosynthesis, transpiration, shoot water potential, and root hydraulic conductance were lower in FR compared with TR seedlings under both growing conditions. Magnitude of difference in root hydraulic conductance was higher under warm-dry conditions. Chlorophyll fluorescence …

Water Resources Impact - Volume 10, Number 3, May 2008

USDA Forest Service / UNL Faculty Publications

FEATURE ARTICLES:
3 Riparian Ecosystems and Buffers: Working at the Water’s Edge ... Albert H. Todd Introduces the dynamic interrelationship between streams and the lands through which they pass, and the role buffers play today.

6 Riparian Zones: They Aren’t Just for Buffers Any More ... Mark P. Smith, Roy Schiff, and Jeff Opperman Describes the active river area as a dynamic and useful framework for managing critical river and riparian ecosystems

9 Living Shorelines: Restoring Multi-Function Buffers on Coastal Shorelines ... William G. Reay and Scott Lerberg Living Shoreline design offers a comprehensive solution to anthropogenic degradation of coastal …

Forest Nursery Notes

USDA Forest Service / UNL Faculty Publications

Contents:

Nursery Meetings

Maintaining Stock Quality After Harvesting by Thomas D. Landis and Diane Haase

Root Culturing in Bareroot Nurseries by Thomas D. Landis

Mechanical Root Pruning in Container Nurseries by Thomas D. Landis and Don Willis

Hot-planting Opens New Outplanting Windows at High Elevations and Latitudes by Thomas D. Landis and Douglass F. Jacobs

Horticultural Humor

New Nursery Literature:
NEW PROCEDURE—ELECTRONIC COPIES ONLY
Bareroot Production
Container Production
Business Management
Diverse Species
Fertilization and Nutrition
General and Miscellaneous
Nursery Structures And Equipment
Genetics and Tree Improvement
Mycorrhizae and Beneficial Microorganisms
Outplanting Performance
Pest Management
Pesticides
Seedling Physiology And Morphology
Seeds …

Agroforestry: Working Trees For Sequestering Carbon On Agricultural Lands, Michele M. Schoeneberger

USDA Forest Service / UNL Faculty Publications

Agroforestry is an appealing option for sequestering carbon on agricultural lands because it can sequester significant amounts of carbon while leaving the bulk of the land in agricultural production. Simultaneously, it can help landowners and society address many other issues facing these lands, such as economic diversification, biodiversity, and water quality. Nonetheless, agroforestry remains under-recognized as a greenhouse gas mitigation option for agriculture in the US. Reasons for this include the limited information base and number of tools agroforestry can currently offer as compared to that produced from the decades-worth of investment in agriculture and forestry, and agroforestry’s cross-cutting nature …

Modeling Runoff And Sediment Yield From A Terraced Watershed Using Wepp, Mary Carla Mccullough, Dean E. Eisenhauer, Mike Dosskey

USDA Forest Service / UNL Faculty Publications

The watershed version of WEPP (Water Erosion Prediction Project) was used to estimate 50-year runoff and sediment yields for a 291 ha watershed in eastern Nebraska that is 90% terraced and which has no historical gage data. The watershed has a complex matrix of elements, including terraced and non-terraced subwatersheds, multiple combinations of soils and land management, a grassed-waterway network, and natural stream channels leading to the outlet. The objectives of this study were to model the study watershed using WEPP and to evaluate model results compared to literature values. WEPP estimated the sediment yield to be 1.9 T/ha/yr, the …

Filling The Gap: Improving Estimates Of Working Tree Resources In Agricultural Landscapes, C. H. Perry, C. W. Woodall, G. C. Liknes, Michele M. Schoeneberger

USDA Forest Service / UNL Faculty Publications

Agroforestry plantings and other trees intentionally established in rural and urban areas are emerging as innovative management options for addressing resource issues and achieving landscape-level goals. An understanding of the ecosystem services contributed by these and future plantings would provide critical information to policy and program developers, and a comprehensive inventory would contribute to estimating the cumulative effects of these plantings. Trees used in these practices are not explicitly inventoried by the primary national forest resource inventory of the United States: the Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program of the USDA Forest Service. The FIA program currently limits its inventories …

Buffers And Vegetative Filter Strips, Matthew J. Helmers, Thomas M. Isenhart, Mike Dosskey, Seth M. Dabney, Jeffrey S. Strock

USDA Forest Service / UNL Faculty Publications

This chapter describes the use of buffers and vegetative filter strips relative to water quality. In particular, we primarily discuss the herbaceous components of the following NRCS Conservation Practice Standards:
Filter Strip (393)
Alley Cropping (311)
Riparian Forest Buffer (391)
Vegetative Barrier (601)
Conservation Cover (327)
Riparian Herbaceous Cover (390)
Contour Buffer Strips (332)
Grassed Waterway (412)

Placement of most of these practices is illustrated in figure 4-1. Common purposes of these herbaceous components (as defined by the NRCS Conservation Practice Standards) are to:
• Reduce the sediment, particulate organics, and sediment-adsorbed contaminant loadings in runoff.
• Reduce dissolved contaminant …

Silvopasture: Establishment & Management Principles For Pine Forests In The Southeastern United States

USDA Forest Service / UNL Faculty Publications

Silvopasture is an agroforestry practice that integrates livestock, forage production, and forestry on the same land management unit. Silvopasture systems are deliberately designed and managed to produce a high-value timber product (such as sawtimber) in the long term while providing short-term annual economic benefit from a livestock component through the management of forage or an annual crop component.

Well-managed silvopasture systems may also:

• Improve overall economic performance of a farm enterprise through diversification and maintaining biodiversity

• Maintain or increase tree growth

• Improve cool-season grass production

• Allow warm-season grass production with careful canopy management

• Provide shade …

The Wetlands Reserve Program Supports Migrating Waterfowl In Nebraska’S Rainwater Basin Region

USDA Forest Service / UNL Faculty Publications

The Rainwater Basin region (RWB) consists of a 6,150 mi2 area of loess plains in south-central Nebraska (figure 1). The area is characterized by rolling plains formed by deep deposits of windblown silt with a high density of claypan playa wetlands. More than 200,000 acres of wetlands once existed in this region. As a result of agricultural and other development, only 17 percent of the original playa wetland area remains, most with hydrologic alterations. Siltation and colonization by invasive plant species (e.g., reed canary grass, narrow-leaved cattail, river bulrush) continue to threaten remaining wetland habitats in the RWB.

Despite historic …

Ecological Development And Function Of Shelterbelts In Temperate North America, C. W. Mize, James R. Brandle, M. M. Schoneberger, G. Bentrup

USDA Forest Service / UNL Faculty Publications

As the world’s population continues to expand, the pressure on farmland, both from expansion of urban areas (United Nations, 2002) and from a need to produce more food and fiber (Hewitt and Smith, 1995; Gardner, 1996), will increase. In direct competition with the increasing demand for more food and fiber is a growing public desire for conservation of natural systems and a focus on quality of life issues (Matson et al., 1997; Jackson and Jackson, 2002; Pimentel et al., 2004).

These two societal needs are clearly linked. Unfortunately, they are antagonistic, not complementary. The impacts of intensive agriculture, needed to …

Recreation Visitor Attitudes Towards Management-Ignited Prescribed Fires In The Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex, Montana, Katie Knotek, Alan E. Watson, William T. Borrie, Joshua G. Whitmore, David Turner

USDA Forest Service / UNL Faculty Publications

Research at the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex in Montana explored differences in recreation visitors’ attitudes towards the use of management-ignited prescribed fires in the wilderness. A mail-back survey of visitors (n = 291) during the 2004 season revealed that over half of visitors would accept prescribed fires in wilderness. This support did not vary by ignition purpose: (a) to restore the natural role of fire or (b) to reduce hazardous fuels and potential for fire escaping to non-wilderness lands. Local visitors, however, were significantly more accepting of prescribed fires than non-local visitors across both ignition purposes. A smaller proportion …

A Novel Approach For Assessing Density And Range-Wide Abundance Of Prairie Dogs, Aaron N. Facka, Paulette L. Ford, Gary W. Roemer

USDA Forest Service / UNL Faculty Publications

Habitat loss, introduced disease, and government-sponsored eradication programs have caused population declines in all 5 species of prairie dogs. Black-tailed prairie dogs (Cynomys ludovicianus) currently occupy only about 2% of an extensive geographic range (160 million hectares) and were recently considered for listing under the United States Endangered Species Act. Accurate estimates of density for populations of prairie dogs would be valuable for estimating range-wide abundance and for determining threats to species persistence, yet estimates of density using robust approaches (e.g., complete enumeration or mark–recapture) are rarely undertaken. We introduce a novel approach to estimating density of prairie …

Biology And Biological Control Of Exotic True Thistles, Rachel Winston, Rich Hansen, Mark Schwarzlander, Eric Coombs, Carol Bell Randall, Rodney Lym

USDA Forest Service / UNL Faculty Publications

“Thistle” is an old English name for a large variety of weedy, prickly plants that grow throughout the world. The most notable characteristics of thistles are the prickly stems and leaves and the bracts around the flower head. While many different plants have “thistle” in their common name, only certain plant species fit the taxonomic requirements of being considered “true thistles.” True thistle species fall within the family Asteraceae, the tribe Cardueae, and the subtribe Carduinae. Examples of plants that are not true thistles include yellow starthistle (subtribe Centaureinae), sow thistle (subtribe Sonchinae), and Russian thistle (family Chenopodiaceae). Only true …

Hmong Americans And Public Lands In Minnesota And Wisconsin, David N. Bengston, Michele A. Schermann, Maikia Moua, Tou Thai Lee

USDA Forest Service / UNL Faculty Publications

Natural resource managers and policy-makers need to understand the cultures and perspectives of ethnic minority communities in order to serve them effectively. In this exploratory study, we focus on Hmong Americans, perhaps the least-studied and -understood Asian ethnic group in the United States. The Hmong, who lived in the mountains of Laos,were relatively isolated until they were secretly recruited and armed by the United States Central Intelligence Agency in the early 1960s to fight the communist Pathet Lao and their North Vietnamese allies (Warner 1998). When the Americans abruptly withdrew from Vietnam and Laos and the pro-American Royal Laotian government …

The “Adaptable Human” Phenomenon: Implications For Recreation Management In High-Use Wilderness, David N. Cole, Troy E. Hall

USDA Forest Service / UNL Faculty Publications

Wilderness managers must balance providing access for wilderness recreation with protecting the special experiences wilderness provides. This balancing act is particularly challenging at popular destinations close to large metropolitan areas. Such destinations provide substantial societal benefits by allowing respite from city life and immersion in natural environments for thousands; however, the thousands that throng to these places detract from the wildness and sense of solitude that wilderness should provide. Managers are left wondering what sorts of experiences are appropriate in such places or, more precisely, what experiences are so inappropriate that restrictive actions should be taken to avoid them. Particularly …

Discrete Return Lidar-Based Prediction Of Leaf Area Index In Two Conifer Forests, Jennifer L.R. Jensen, Karen S. Humes, Lee A. Vierling, Andrew T. Hudak

USDA Forest Service / UNL Faculty Publications

Leaf area index (LAI) is a key forest structural characteristic that serves as a primary control for exchanges of mass and energy within a vegetated ecosystem. Most previous attempts to estimate LAI from remotely sensed data have relied on empirical relationships between field-measured observations and various spectral vegetation indices (SVIs) derived from optical imagery or the inversion of canopy radiative transfer models. However, as biomass within an ecosystem increases, accurate LAI estimates are difficult to quantify. Here we use lidar data in conjunction with SPOT5-derived spectral vegetation indices (SVIs) to examine the extent to which integration of both lidar and …

Geographic Patterns Of At-Risk Species, Curtis H. Flather, Michael S. Knowles, Jason Mcnees

USDA Forest Service / UNL Faculty Publications

This technical document supports the Forest Service’s requirement to assess the status of renewable natural resources as mandated by the Forest and Rangeland Renewable Resources Planning Act of 1974. It updates past reports on the trends and geographic patterns of species formally listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act of 1973. We compare the geographic occupancy of threatened and endangered species at the county-level against the geographic occupancy of a broader set of species thought to be at risk of extinction. This is done to determine if new areas where species rarity may be concentrated emerge. Here …