Life Sciences Commons^™

Tree Circumference Dynamics In Four Forests Characterized Using Automated Dendrometer Bands, Valentine Herrmann, Sean M. Mcmahon, Matteo Detto, James A. Lutz, Chia-Hao Chang-Yang, Kristina J. Anderson-Teixeira

Wildland Resources Faculty Publications

Stem diameter is one of the most commonly measured attributes of trees, forming the foundation of forest censuses and monitoring. Changes in tree stem circumference include both irreversible woody stem growth and reversible circumference changes related to water status, yet these fine-scale dynamics are rarely leveraged to understand forest ecophysiology and typically ignored in plot- or stand-scale estimates of tree growth and forest productivity. Here, we deployed automated dendrometer bands on 12–40 trees at four different forested sites—two temperate broadleaf deciduous, one temperate conifer, and one tropical broad-leaf semi-deciduous—to understand how tree circumference varies on time scales of hours to …

Adaptive Variation And Introgression Of A Constans-Like Gene In North American Red Oaks, Jennifer F. Lind-Riehl, Oliver Gailing

Michigan Tech Publications

Oaks provide a model system to study maintenance of species identity by divergent selection since they maintain morphological differences and ecological adaptations despite interspecific hybridization. The genome of closely related interfertile oak species was shown to be largely homogeneous, with a few genomic areas exhibiting high interspecific differentiation possibly as result of strong divergent selection. Previously, a genic microsatellite was identified as under strong divergent selection, being nearly fixed on alternative alleles in the two interfertile North American red oak species: Quercus rubra L. and Quercus ellipsoidalis E.J. Hill. Further genotyping in two other red oak species—Quercus velutina Lam. and …

Evolutionary Heritage Influences Amazon Tree Ecology, Fernanda Coelho De Souza, Kyle G. Dexter, Oliver L. Phillips, Roel J. W. Brienen, Jerome Chave, David Galbraith, Gabriela Lopez Gonzalez, Abel Monteagudo M., R. Toby Pennington, Lourens Poorter, Miguel Alexiades, Esteban Alvarez Davila, Ana Andrade, Luiz E. O. C. Aragao, Alejandro Araujo-Murakami, Eric Arets, Gerardo A. Aymard C., Christopher Baraloto, Jorcely Barroso, Damien Bonal, Rene G. A. Boot, Jose Luis C. Camargo, James A. Comiskey, Fernando Cornejo Valverde, Plinio Barbosa De Camargo, Anthony Di Fiore, Fernando Elias, Terry L. Erwin, Ted R. Feldpausch, Leandro Ferreira, Nikolaos M. Fyllas, Manuel Gloor, Bruno Herault, Rafael Herrera, Niro Higuchi, Euridice N. Honorio Coronado, Timothy Killeen, William F. Laurance, Susan G. W. Laurance, Jon Lloyd, Thomas E. Lovejoy, Yadvinder Malhi, Leandro Maracahipes, Beatriz S. Marimon, Ben-Hur Marimon Jr., Casimiro Mendoza, Paulo S. Morandi, David Neill, Percy Nunez Vargas, Edmar A. Oliveira, Eddie Lenza, Walter Palacios, Maria C. Penuela-Mora, John J. Pipoly Iii, Nigel C. A. Pitman, Adriana Prieto, Carlos A. Quesada, Hirma Ramirez-Angulo, Agustin Rudas, Kalle Ruokolainen, Rafael P. Salomao, Marcos Silveira, Juliana Stropp, Hans Ter Steege, Raquel Thomas, Peter Van Der Hout, Geertje Van Der Heijden, Peter J. Van Der Meer, Rodolfo V. Vasquez, Simone A. Vieira, Emilio Vilanova, Vincent A. Vos, Ophelia Wang, Kenneth R. Young, Roderick J. Zagt

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

Lineages tend to retain ecological characteristics of their ancestors through time. However, for some traits, selection during evolutionary history may have also played a role in determining trait values. To address the relative importance of these processes requires large-scale quantification of traits and evolutionary relationships among species. The Amazonian tree flora comprises a high diversity of angiosperm lineages and species with widely differing life-history characteristics, providing an excellent system to investigate the combined influences of evolutionary heritage and selection in determining trait variation. We used trait data related to the major axes of life-history variation among tropical trees (e.g. growth …

Predictive Modeling Of Black Spruce (Picea Mariana (Mill.) B.S.P.) Wood Density Using Stand Structure Variables Derived From Airborne Lidar Data In Boreal Forests Of Ontario, Bharat Pokharel, Art Groot, Douglas G. Pitt, Murray Woods, Jeffery P. Dech

Agricultural and Environmental Sciences Faculty Research

Our objective was to model the average wood density in black spruce trees in representative stands across a boreal forest landscape based on relationships with predictor variables extracted from airborne light detection and ranging (LiDAR) point cloud data. Increment core samples were collected from dominant or co-dominant black spruce trees in a network of 400 m2 plots distributed among forest stands representing the full range of species composition and stand development across a 1,231,707 ha forest management unit in northeastern Ontario, Canada. Wood quality data were generated from optical microscopy, image analysis, X-ray densitometry and diffractometry as employed in SilviScan™. …

Forest Restoration Using Variable Density Thinning: Lessons From Douglas-Fir Stands In Western Oregon, Klaus J. Puettmann, Adrian Ares, Julia I. Burton, Erich Kyle Dodson

Wildland Resources Faculty Publications

A large research effort was initiated in the 1990s in western United States and Canada to investigate how the development of old-growth structures can be accelerated in young even-aged stands that regenerated following clearcut harvests, while also providing income and ecosystem services. Large-scale experiments were established to compare effects of thinning arrangements (e.g., spatial variability) and residual densities (including leave islands and gaps of various sizes). Treatment effects were context dependent, varying with initial conditions and spatial and temporal scales of measurement. The general trends were highly predictable, but most responses were spatially variable. Thus, accounting for initial conditions at …

Reintroducing Environmental Change Drivers In Biodiversity-Ecosystem Functioning Research., Frederik De Laender, Jason R. Rohr, Roman Ashauer, Donald J Baird, Uta Berger, Nico Eisenhauer, Volker Grimm, Udo Hommen, Lorraine Maltby, Carlos J Meliàn

Integrative Biology Faculty and Staff Publications

For the past 20 years, research on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning (B-EF) has only implicitly considered the underlying role of environmental change. We illustrate that explicitly reintroducing environmental change drivers in B-EF research is needed to predict the functioning of ecosystems facing changes in biodiversity. Next we show how this reintroduction improves experimental control over community composition and structure, which helps to provide mechanistic insight on how multiple aspects of biodiversity relate to function and how biodiversity and function relate in food webs. We also highlight challenges for the proposed reintroduction and suggest analyses and experiments to better understand how …

Forest Ecosystems Of Temperate Climatic Regions: From Ancient Use To Climate Change, Frank S. Gilliam

Biological Sciences Faculty Research

Humans have long utilized resources from all forest biomes, but the most indelible anthropogenic signature has been the expanse of human populations in temperate forests. The purpose of this review is to bring into focus the diverse forests of the temperate region of the biosphere, including those of hardwood, conifer and mixed dominance, with a particular emphasis on crucial challenges for the future of these forested areas. Implicit in the term ‘temperate’ is that the predominant climate of these forest regions has distinct cyclic, seasonal changes involving periods of growth and dormancy. The specific temporal patterns of seasonal change, however, …

Effects Of Excess Nitrogen On Biogeochemistry Of A Temperate Hardwood Forest: Evidence Of Nutrient Redistribution By A Forest Understory Species, Frank S. Gilliam, Jake H. Billmyer, Christopher A. Walter, William T. Peterjohn

Biological Sciences Faculty Research

Excess nitrogen (N) in terrestrial ecosystems can arise from anthropogenically-increased atmospheric N deposition, a phenomenon common in eastern US forests. In spite of decreased N emissions over recent years, atmospheric concentrations of reactive N remain high in areas within this region. Excess N in forests has been shown to alter biogeochemical cycling of essential plant nutrients primarily via enhanced production and leaching of nitrate, which leads to loss of base cations from the soil. The purpose of our study was to investigate this phenomenon using a multifaceted approach to examine foliar nutrients of two herbaceous layer species in one N-treated …

Timber Talk, Vol. 54, No. 4, December 2016

Timber Talk: Nebraska Forest Industry Newsletter

In This Issue

Lumber Market Reports 1

Hardwood Lumber Prices 2

Note from the Editor - EAB Meeting Discussion 3

THE CHALLENGE - Using Forest Residues from Forest Operations 4

2016 Tax Tips Bulletin Available 4

Nebraska Forest Industry Spotlight 5

Alaska Airlines’ first flight with biofuel made from forest residuals 7

The Four “P’s” of Marketing Your Small Sawmill Business 7

Trading Post 8

Vegetation Response To Canopy Disturbance And Season Of Burn During Oak Woodland And Savanna Restoration In Tennessee, Andrew Lee Vander Yacht, Seth A. Barrioz, Patrick D. Keyser, Craig A. Harper, David Buckley, David A. Buehler, Roger D. Applegate

UT Extension publication

The removal of fire’s influence on plant community succession has resulted in the near disappearance of oak woodlands and savannas from the Appalachian region. Negative trends in associated plant and wildlife species could be reversed if these communities are restored, but management has been limited by inadequate canopy disturbance, resprouting of woody plants, and a lack of empirical research. To address these issues, we evaluated herbaceous and woody vegetation response on the

Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee to 5 replicated treatments involving canopy reduction and fire-season combinations and unmanaged controls. All categories of woody vegetation except large saplings density, but resprouting …

Linking Hydraulic Traits To Tropical Forest Function In A Size-Structured And Trait-Driven Model (Tfs V.1-Hydro), Bradley O. Christoffersen, Manuel Gloor, Sophie Fauset, Nikolaos M. Fyllas, David R. Galbraith, Timothy R. Baker, Bart Kruij, Lucy Rowland, Rosie A. Fisher, Oliver J. Binks

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Forest ecosystem models based on heuristic water stress functions poorly predict tropical forest response to drought partly because they do not capture the diversity of hydraulic traits (including variation in tree size) observed in tropical forests. We developed a continuous porous media approach to modeling plant hydraulics in which all parameters of the constitutive equations are biologically interpretable and measurable plant hydraulic traits (e.g., turgor loss point πtlp, bulk elastic modulus ε, hydraulic capacitance Cft, xylem hydraulic conductivity ks,max, water potential at 50 % loss of conductivity for both xylem (P50,x) and stomata ( …

Historical Fire In Longleaf Pine (Pinus Palustris) Forests Of South Mississippi And Its Relation To Land Use And Climate, Charles Raymond White, Grant L. Harley

Faculty Publications

We characterized historical fire regimes in Pinus palustris (longleaf pine) forests of southern Mississippi with regard to global and regional coupled climate systems (e.g., El Niño–Southern Oscillation) and past human activity. The composite fire chronology spanned 1756–2013 with 132 individual scars representing 89 separate fire events. The mean fire interval was 2.9 yr, and mean intervals were significantly different between identified time periods (e.g., settlement period vs. management period). Evidence of biannual fire activity (up to three fires occurring within a 12‐ to 15‐month period) was found coeval with a peak in livestock grazing and logging from the 1850s through …

Silica Uptake And Release In Live And Decaying Biomass In A Northern Hardwood Forest, Wim Clymans, Daniel J. Conley, John J. Battles, Patrick J. Frings, Mary Margaret Koppers, Gene E. Likens, Chris E. Johnson

Civil and Environmental Engineering

In terrestrial ecosystems, a large portion (20–80%) of the dissolved Si (DSi) in soil solution has passed through vegetation. While the importance of this “terrestrial Si filter” is generally accepted, few data exist on the pools and fluxes of Si in forest vegetation and the rate of release of Si from decomposing plant tissues. We quantified the pools and fluxes of Si through vegetation and coarse woody debris (CWD) in a northern hardwood forest ecosystem (Watershed 6, W6) at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest (HBEF) in New Hampshire, USA. Previous work suggested that the decomposition of CWD may have significantly …

Agricultural Trade Publications And The 2012 Midwestern U.S. Drought: A Missed Opportunity For Climate Risk Communication, Sarah P. Church, Tonya Haigh, Melissa Widhalm, Silvestre Garcia De Jalon, Nicholas Babin, Stuart Carlton, Michael Dunn, Katie Fagan, Cody L. Knutson, Linda Stalker Prokopy

Department of Forestry & Natural Resources Faculty Publications

The Midwestern United States experienced a devastating drought in 2012, leading to reduced corn and soybean yields and increased instances of pests and disease. Climate change induced weather variability and extremes are expected to increase in the future, and have and will continue to impact the agricultural sector. This study investigated how agricultural trade publications portrayed the 2012 U.S. Midwestern drought, whether climate change was associated with drought, and whether these publications laid out transformative adaptation measures farmers could undertake in order to increase their adaptive capacity for future climate uncertainty. We performed a content analysis of 1000 media reports …

The Potential Of Forest Biomass Inversion Based On Vegetation Indices Using Multi-Angle Chris/Proba Data, Qiang Wang, Yong Pang, Zengyuan Li, Guoqing Sun, Erxue Chen, Wenge Ni-Meister

Publications and Research

Multi-angle remote sensing can either be regarded as an added source of uncertainty for variable retrieval, or as a source of additional information, which enhances variable retrieval compared to traditional single-angle observation. However, the magnitude of these angular and band effects for forest structure parameters is difficult to quantify. We used the Discrete Anisotropic Radiative Transfer (DART) model and the Zelig model to simulate the forest canopy Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Factor (BRDF) in order to build a look-up table, and eight vegetation indices were used to assess the relationship between BRDF and forest biomass in order to find the sensitive …

Activated Carbon Derived From Pyrolyzed Pinewood Char Using Elevated Temperature, Koh, H3po4, And H2o2., Yan Luo, Jason T. Street, Philip H. Steele, Edward D. Entsminger, Vamshi K. Guda

College of Forest Resources Publications and Scholarship

Activated carbon was prepared from pyrolyzed pinewood char using KOH, H3PO4, H2O2, and heat-only treatments. Activated carbon prepared by the heat-only treatment had a total surface area of 233.2 m2/g, a total pore volume of 0.138 cm3/g, a microporous surface area of 129.9 m2/g, and a microporous volume of 0.07 cm3/g. The most significant improvement of pore properties for the chemically treated pinewood char was obtained by the KOH treatment, which produced a total surface area of 1124.4 m2/g, a total pore volume of 0.723 cm3/g, a microporous surface area of 923.6 m2/g, and a microporous volume of 0.485 cm3/g. …

Agenda: Flpma Turns 40, University Of Colorado Boulder. Getches-Wilkinson Center For Natural Resources, Energy, And The Environment

FLPMA Turns 40 (October 21)

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) administers approximately 245 million acres of our public lands and yet, for most of our nation's history, these lands seemed largely destined to end up in private hands. Even when the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934 ushered in an important era of better managing public grazing districts and "promoting the highest use of the public lands," such use of our public lands still was plainly considered temporary, "pending its final disposal." It was not until 1976 with the passage of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) that congress adopted a policy that …

Slides: Flpma In Its Historical Context, John D. Leshy

FLPMA Turns 40 (October 21)

Presenter: John D. Leshy, Sunderland Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, U.C. Hastings College of the Law

36 slides

This session traces the history of FLPMA including, among other things, its legislative, administrative, and historical antecedents, including for example, the Public Land Law Review Commission’s 1970 report, One Third of Our Nation’s Lands. It then considers FLPMA’s unique public lands policies and requirements and how they are reflected in the BLM’s management of public lands today.

See: https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/blm/history/contents.htm

The Variation Of Productivity And Its Allocation Along A Tropical Elevation Gradient: A Whole Carbon Budget Perspective, Yadvinder Malhi, Cécile A. J. Girardin, Gregory R. Goldsmith, Christopher E. Doughty, Norma Salinas, Daniel B. Metcalfe, Walter Huaraca Huasco, Javier E. Silva-Espejo, Jhon Del Aguilla-Pasquell, Filio Farfán Amézquita, Luiz E.O.C. Aragão, Rossella Guerrieri, Françoise Yoko Ishida, Nur Bahar, William Farfan-Rios, Oliver L. Phillips, Patrick Meir, Miles Silman

Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles and Research

• Why do forest productivity and biomass decline with elevation? To address this question, research to date generally has focused on correlative approaches describing changes in woody growth and biomass with elevation.
  
  
• We present a novel, mechanistic approach to this question by quantifying the autotrophic carbon budget in 16 forest plots along a 3300 m elevation transect in Peru.
  
  
• Low growth rates at high elevations appear primarily driven by low gross primary productivity (GPP), with little shift in either carbon use efficiency (CUE) or allocation of net primary productivity (NPP) between wood, fine roots and canopy. The lack of trend in …

Meeting Minutes, October 19th, 2016, National Smokejumper Association Board Of Directors

National Smokejumper Association Meeting Minutes

Agenda: Call to order.; Introductions.; Approval of the agenda.; Approval of previous meeting minutes.; Scholarship program update with review of applicant criteria.; Report on 2015 Trails Program.; The Smokey Generation website and photo gallery.; Traveling Smokejumper display.; Membership Report.; Good Samaritan Fund report.; Deputy Director of Fire & Aviation, USFS.; Injury data for this year not completed.; Website Committee update.; Budget Report of 2015-16 1St quarter Budget.; Hotshot Association.; Investment Committee report.; Merchandise report-future.; Report on Directors & Officer Liability Insurance.; Wildland Firefighters Foundation on museum/interpretive center.; Policy, practice and accountability for fundraising projects.; Evaluation of our Facebook presence.; reconvene.; …

Useful To Usable: Developing Usable Climate Science For Agriculture, Linda S. Prokopy, J Stuart Carlton, Tonya Haigh, Maria Carmen Lemos, Amber Saylor Mase, Melissa Widhalm

Department of Forestry & Natural Resources Faculty Publications

The Useful to Usable (U2U) project was a six-year research and extension project funded by the United States Department of Agriculture to provide both useful and usable climate information for the agricultural (corn) sector in the Midwestern United States. The project adopted an extensive co-production of knowledge and decision-making approach that involved intense iteration with potential end-users, including farmers and a variety of pro- fessional agricultural advisors, through focus groups and surveys, feedback at outreach events, and frequent informal interactions to develop both decision support tools and delivery mechanisms that met stakeholder needs. This overview paper for this special issue …

Critical Review Of The Millennium Project In Nepal, Ashma Vaidya, Audrey L. Mayer

College of Forest Resources and Environmental Science Publications

“Our Common Future” harmonized development policies around a new sustainable development (SD) paradigm, and experts also emphasize the importance of a democratic and equitable approach to define and achieve sustainable development. However, SD targets and indicators are often defined by a suite of experts or a few stakeholder groups, far removed from on-the-ground conditions. The most common expert-led development framework, the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), promoted one set of targets and indicators for all developing countries. While progress towards these targets was routinely reported at the national scale, these targets may not reflect context-specific sustainable development. We evaluated …

Assisted Tree Migration In North America: Policy Legacies, Enhanced Forest Policy Integration, And Climate Change Adaptation, Adam Wellstead, Michael Howlett

Department of Social Sciences Publications

The weight of much expert forest management opinion is that issues such as climate change can be effectively addressed only if forest policy-making moves from a purely sectoral focus and undergoes a shift to a more integrated multi-issue, multi-sector policy-making process. This is because credible adaptation policies in the sector require greatly enhanced multi-sectoral policy integration if they are to succeed. But this requirement may be beyond the capacity of many countries to deliver. This article explores the integration challenges faced by forest policy-making in Canada and the United States and uses the case of Assisted Tree Migration (ATM) to …

Rapid Land Cover Map Updates Using Change Detection And Robust Random Forest Classifiersrapid Land Cover Map Updates Using Change Detection And Robust Random Forest Classifiers, Konrad J. Wassels, Frans Van Den Bergh, David P. Roy, Brian P. Salmon, Karen C. Steenkemp, Bryan Macalister, Derick Swanepoel, Debbie Jewitt

GSCE Faculty Publications

The paper evaluated the Landsat Automated Land Cover Update Mapping (LALCUM) system designed to rapidly update a land cover map to a desired nominal year using a pre-existing reference land cover map. The system uses the Iteratively Reweighted Multivariate Alteration Detection (IRMAD) to identify areas of change and no change. The system then automatically generates large amounts of training samples (n > 1 million) in the no-change areas as input to an optimized Random Forest classifier. Experiments were conducted in the KwaZulu-Natal Province of South Africa using a reference land cover map from 2008, a change mask between 2008 and …

Arboretum Annual Report 2015-2016, Glenn Dreyer

Annual Reports

No abstract provided.

2014 Maple Business Benchmark, Mark Cannella, Christopher Lindgren, Betsy Miller

UVM Extension Faculty Publications

Maple producers experienced record crop yields matched with sustained strong prices in the 2013 sugaring season. Moving into the 2014 sugaring season producers were aware of slight price declines in the forecast. While producers were still hopeful for a strong sugaring season many managers were concerned that too large of a crop might overwhelm the overall syrup supply and accelerate the price drops (it was not until later in 2014 that producers learn that market price declines would be primarily driven by the Canadian/US currency exchange rates).

The University of Vermont Extension worked with 18 maple producers to complete financial …

The Dandy Scroll, Fall 2016, University Of Maine Pulp And Paper Foundation

General University of Maine Publications

The Fall 2016 issue of The Dandy Scroll newsletter produced by the University of Maine Pulp and Paper Foundation.

Evaluation Des Impacts Sociaux Et Ecologiques De La Gestion Communautaire De La Forêt D’Analabe, Nicole Israel-Meyer

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Le transfert de gestion des forêts de l’Etat vers les communautés locales est l’une des approches que le gouvernement malgache a implémentées pour à la fois conserver la biodiversité locale et continuer le développement rural. Cette étude cherche à comprendre les impacts sociaux et écologiques de la gestion communautaire de la forêt d’Analabe par le VOI Fanarenana. La forêt d’Analabe se trouve dans le secteur d’Antanandava du district Majunga II dans le nord-ouest du pays. En utilisant une méthodologie mixte, l’étude a exposé que dans les trois ans d’opération du VOI Fanarenana, la forêt est plus saine et la majorité …

The Importance Of Rivers In Protected Areas: Macroinvertebrate Sampling Reveals The Impact Of Humans And Highways On Water Quality, Marie-Claire Harrison

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The water quality and level of contamination of two rivers in a cloud forest ecosystem in the Mejía region of Ecuador, the Tupí River and the Pilatón River were assessed through benthic macroinvertebrate sampling at various sites along the rivers. Many different biological indices were then used to assess water quality at each site. Pollution in the form of grey water, black water, and petroleum negatively impacted the water quality of the both rivers as they pass through the town of La Esperie. Differences in river structure and size also played a role in determining the prevalence of certain benthic …

Shrub Consumption And Immediate Changes In Shrub Community And Spatial Patterns By Reintroduced Fire In Yosemite National Park, California, Usa; Supplemental Information, J. A. Lutz, T. J. Furniss, S. J. Germain, K. M. L. Becker, E. M. Blomdahl, S. A. Jeronimo, C. A. Cansler, J. A. Freund, M. E. Swanson, A. J. Larson

Browse all Datasets

Fire behavior in the Yosemite Forest Dynamics Plot during the Rim Fire as captured by the USFS Fire Behavior Assessment Team and reported in Ewell, C., D.F. Smith, M. Hilden, S. Greene, D. Coultrap, K. Robinson, N. Vaillant, A. Reiner, T. Norman. 2015. 2013 Rim Fire Stanislaus National Forest and Yosemite National Park Fire Behavior Assessment Team Summary Report. Each video was started based on a thermocouple trigger when the fire reached it.