Life Sciences Commons^™

Growth, Browsing And Mortality In Mixed Oak And Pine Plantings, Heather Slayton

Masters Theses

The purpose of this project was to determine if different oak/pine arrangements elicited potential beneficial interactions that affected seedling growth, mortality and overall protection from deer browsing. Northern red oak (Quercus rubra L.) and shortleaf pine (Pinus echinata Mill.) were planted together and alone in six different planting patterns and spacings, replicated over three blocks in recent clearcuts in east Tennessee, USA. Each block consisted of two monocultures planted at a 3.0 by 3.0 meter (m) spacing and four multi-cropped treatments planted at varying spatial arrangements (0.3 m, 1.0 m, 1.5 m, and 3.0 m) from neighboring shortleaf …

Lidar Evaluation Of The Structural Complexity Of Multi-Cropped White Oak (Quercus Alba) And Pine (Pinus Spp.) Plantings In East Tennessee, Usa, Bret Alan Elgersma

Masters Theses

Structural complexity has an important influence on wildlife habitat and several other ecosystem services. Establishment of white oak (Quercus alba) intercropped with loblolly pine (Pinus taeda), shortleaf pine (Pinus echinata), or eastern white pine (Pinus strobus), in 2014 provided the opportunity to investigate effects of planting species mixtures in different spatial arrangements on structural complexity. Terrestrial LiDAR was used to evaluate the structure of each intercropped treatment and monoculture control. The measures of complexity included: 1) rumple 2) top rugosity 3) standard deviation of individual tree crown area, 4) standard deviation of …

Eyield: Testing The Adoption And Outcomes Of A Novel Online Growth And Yield Model, Timothy S. Kane

Masters Theses

eYield is an online growth and yield platform designed to assist landowners and land managers in making the best choices for their properties. eYield aims to strike a balance between the necessary data to run growth and yield models while remaining accessible to its landowner userbase. The results of this paper point to an encouraging amount of user interest in computer-aided forestry tools, specifically in growth and yield models like eYield. The pre- and post-surveys of eYield from respondents suggest that there is a yearning for tools like eYield and that eYield is reasonably representative of the real world. These …

Regenerative Effects Of Patch Cut Harvests At Natchez Trace State Forest, Joshua K. Biggerstaff

Masters Theses

Patch cutting is a harvest method with very little precedent in the Central Hardwoods Region of the United States. It is defined as a small scale clearcut of 2 to 5-acres, and it is generally prescribed in order to lessen the aesthetic impact of harvesting in highly visible areas. This study examines a change in harvesting from clearcutting to patch cutting that occurred at Natchez Trace State Forest, located in west Tennessee, in the 1990s. The objective of the study was to determine the regenerative effects of the patch cuts 25-30 years later. Various patch-cut harvest units that were harvested …

Controlling Woody Vegetation For The Underplanting And Reintegration Of Shortleaf Pine Into Upland Hardwood Forests Of The Southeast, Max Street

Masters Theses

Shortleaf pine (Pinus echinata Mill.) has the widest distribution of any pine species in the southeastern United States. Shortleaf pine is an important softwood commercial timber species, second only to loblolly pine (Pinus taeda). The amount of shortleaf pine has diminished dramatically beginning in the early 19^th century.

The decline of shortleaf pine has been attributed to several, primarily societal factors. Old field abandonment has declined which provided optimum seed bed conditions for the establishment of shortleaf pine. The timber industry began to favor the faster-growing loblolly pine with shorter stand rotations at the expense of …