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Timber Talk, Vol. 52, No. 4, November 1, 2014

Timber Talk: Nebraska Forest Industry Newsletter

In This Issue

Lumber Market News ...........................1

Hardwood Lumber Price Trends—Green..................................2

Hardwood Lumber Price Trends—Kiln Dried...........................2

Wood is Good........................................3

Simple Steps for Double Your Firewood Profits................................4

Homemade Log Forwarder...................5

Nebraska Forest Industry Spotlight......6

The Trading Post....................................8

Timber Sales...........................................8

Timber Talk, Vol. 52, No. 3, September 1, 2014

Timber Talk: Nebraska Forest Industry Newsletter

In This Issue

Lumber Market News ...........................1

Hardwood Lumber Price Trends—Green..................................2

Hardwood Lumber Price Trends—Kiln Dried...........................2

Band Saws for Small Sawmills..............3

Sawmills Can Make More than Lumber.............................................5

Nebraska Forest Industry Spotlight......6

The Trading Post....................................8

Timber Sales...........................................8

Development And Evaluation Of High Resolution Simulation Tools To Improve Fire Weather Forecasts, Brian K. Lamb, Jason M. Forthofer, Peter R. Robichaud

JFSP Research Project Reports

Fire weather forecasts rely on numerical weather simulations where the grid size is 4 km x 4 km or larger. In areas of complex terrain, this model resolution will not capture the details of wind flows associated with complicated topography. Wind channeling in valleys, wind speed-up over mountains and ridges, and enhanced turbulence associated with rough terrain and tall forest canopies are poorly represented in current weather model applications. A number of numerical wind flow models have been developed for simulating winds at high resolution; however, there are limited observational data available at the spatial scales appropriate for evaluating these …

Exploring How Deliberation On Scientific Information Shapes Stakeholder Perceptions Of Forest Management And Climate Change, Troy E. Hall, Jarod J. Blades

JFSP Research Project Reports

Climate change has resulted in rapid biophysical changes in forests of the western U.S. and has prompted the need for an increased understanding of potential impacts and adaption measures. Land managers, policy makers, and community officials lack locally relevant climate change science and are urgently calling for research to inform management decisions. Nevertheless, a substantial disconnect remains between emerging scientific information and its application in management decisions. Effective action depends on understanding regional and local implications of climate change and open, reasoned discussions about current research and potential mitigation actions among researchers, land managers, and other stakeholders. Boundary objects have …

Fire Effects On Seedling Establishment Success Across Treeline: Implications For Future Tree Migration And Flammability In A Changing Climate, F. S. Chapin Iii, Teresa N. Hollingsworth, Rebecca E. Hewitt

JFSP Research Project Reports

Understanding the complex mechanisms controlling treeline advance or retreat in the arctic and subarctic has important implications for projecting ecosystem response to changes in climate. Changes in landcover due to a treeline biome shift would alter climate feedbacks (carbon storage and energy exchange), ecosystem services such as wildlife and berry habitat, and landscape flammability. Wildfire frequency and extent has increased in the last half-century in the boreal forest and tundra in response to warmer weather and lower precipitation. Invasion of tundra by trees may be facilitated by wildfire disturbance, which exposes new seedbeds, increases nutrient availability immediately post-fire, and creates …

An Illustrated Id Guide To The Crayfishes Found In Nebraska Native And Non-Native, Steve Schainost

Nebraska Invasive Species Program

There are five crayfishes native to Nebraska. These are:

Orconectes immunis (papershell crayfish)

Orconectes virilis (northern crayfish)

Orconectes neglectus neglectus (ringed crayfish)

Cambarus diogenes (Devil crayfish)

Procambarus gracilis (prairie crayfish)

Three additional non-native crayfishes have also been found here:

Orconectes rusticus (rusty crayfish) [bait tanks and established in two ponds in Omaha]

Procambarus clarkii (red swamp crayfish) [bait tanks]

Procambarus acutus (White River crayfish) [bait tanks]

I will attempt here to provide a photographic guide to field identification, one species per page.

Graduate Research Innovation Awards Encourage Young Scientists To Ask Bold Questions, Gail Wells

Joint Fire Science Program Digests

The Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP), in partnership with the Association for Fire Ecology, offers Graduate Research Innovation (GRIN) awards yearly to a handful of top-quality graduate students conducting research in fire science. GRIN awards are intended to nurture the next generation of fire and fuels scientists and managers, enhance their professional development, help them become engaged with their community of peers, and equip them to tackle the fire and fuels management challenges of today and tomorrow. To earn a GRIN award, master’s and doctoral students are invited to submit succinct four-page proposals for original research in fire ecology, management, …

Housing Development Erodes Avian Community Structure In U.S. Protected Areas, Eric M. Wood, Anna M. Pidgeon, Volker C. Radeloff, David Helmers, Patrick D. Culbert, Nicholas S. Keuler, Curtis H. Flather

USDA Forest Service / UNL Faculty Publications

Protected areas are a cornerstone for biodiversity conservation, but they also provide amenities that attract housing development on inholdings and adjacent private lands. We explored how this development affects biodiversity within and near protected areas among six ecological regions throughout the United States. We quantified the effect of housing density within, at the boundary, and outside protected areas, and natural land cover within protected areas, on the proportional abundance and proportional richness of three avian guilds within protected areas. We developed three guilds from the North American Breeding Bird Survey, which included Species of Greatest Conservation Need, land cover affiliates …

Temporal Fluctuation Scaling In Populations And Communities, Michael Kalyuzhny, Yishai Schreiber, Rachel Chocron, Curtis H. Flather, Ronen Kadmon, David A. Kessler, Nadav M. Shnerb

USDA Forest Service / UNL Faculty Publications

Taylor’s law, one of the most widely accepted generalizations in ecology, states that the variance of a population abundance time series scales as a power law of its mean. Here we reexamine this law and the empirical evidence presented in support of it. Specifically, we show that the exponent generally depends on the length of the time series, and its value reflects the combined effect of many underlying mechanisms. Moreover, sampling errors alone, when presented on a double logarithmic scale, are sufficient to produce an apparent power law. This raises questions regarding the usefulness of Taylor’s law for understanding ecological …

Timber Talk, Vol. 52, No. 2, June 1, 2014

Timber Talk: Nebraska Forest Industry Newsletter

Lumber Market News; Hardwood Lumber Price Trends—Green; Hardwood Lumber Price Trends—Kiln Dried; Commercial Hardwood Lumber Species; How Should You Charge?; Pressure Treated Wood; Nebraska Forest Industry Spotlight; The Trading Post; Food for Thought — TIME; Editor: Adam Smith Graphic/Layout: Anne Moore

Nitrogen And Carbon Dynamics In Prairie Vegetation Strips Across Topographical Gradients In Mixed Central Iowa Agroecosystems, Marlin Perez-Suarez, Michael J. Castellano, Randall Kolka, Heidi Asbjornsen, Matthew J. Helmers

USDA Forest Service / UNL Faculty Publications

Reductions of nitrogen (N) export from agricultural lands because of changes in specific N stocks andfluxes by incorporation of small amounts of prairie vegetation strips (PVS) are poorly understood. Theprimary objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of the presence and topographical position of PVSon soil and plant carbon (C) and N stocks relative to annual crop and native prairie vegetation. The studywas implemented within three small adjacent watersheds, treated with one of the following cover types:(1) 100% row-crop agriculture (CROP); (2) 20% prairie vegetation (PVS) distributed along the contouracross three topographical positions: upslope, sideslope and footslope position; …

Recovery Of Wolverines In The Western United States: Recent Extirpation And Recolonization Or Range Retraction And Expansion?, Kevin S. Mckelvey, Keith B. Aubry, Neil J. Anderson, Anthony P. Clevenger, Jeffrey P. Copeland, Kimberley S. Heinemeyer, Robert M. Iman, John R. Squires, John S. Waller, Kristine L. Pilgrim, Michael K. Schwartz

USDA Forest Service / UNL Faculty Publications

Wolverines were greatly reduced in number and possibly extirpated from the contiguous United States (U.S.) by the early 1900s. Wolverines currently occupy much of their historical range in Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming, but are absent from Utah and only single individuals are known to occur in California and Colorado. In response, the translocation of wolverines to California and Colorado is being considered. If wolverines are to be reintroduced, managers must identify appropriate source populations based on the genetic affinities of historical and modern wolverine populations. We amplified the mitochondrial control region of 13 museum specimens dating from the late …

Performance Of Species Richness Estimators Across Assemblage Types And Survey Parameters, Gordon C. Reese, Kenneth R. Wilson, Curtis H. Flather

USDA Forest Service / UNL Faculty Publications

Aim A raw count of the species encountered across surveys usually underestimates species richness. Statistical estimators are often less biased. Nonparametric estimators of species richness are widely considered the least biased, but no particular estimator has consistently performed best. This is partly a function of estimators responding differently to assemblage-level factors and survey design parameters. Our objective was to evaluate the performance of raw counts and nonparametric estimators of species richness across various assemblages and with different survey designs.

Location We used both simulated and published field data.

Methods We evaluated the bias, precision and accuracy of raw counts and …

A New Metric For Quantifying Burn Severity: The Relativized Burn Ratio, Sean A. Parks, Gregory K. Dillon, Carol Miller

USDA Forest Service / UNL Faculty Publications

Satellite-inferred burn severity data have become increasingly popular over the last decade for management and research purposes. These data typically quantify spectral change between pre-and post-fire satellite images (usually Landsat). There is an active debate regarding which of the two main equations, the delta normalized burn ratio (dNBR) and its relativized form (RdNBR), is most suitable for quantifying burn severity; each has its critics. In this study, we propose and evaluate a new Landsat-based burn severity metric, the relativized burn ratio (RBR), that provides an alternative to dNBR and RdNBR. For 18 fires in the western US, we compared the …

Drought-Induced Woody Plant Mortality In An Encroached Semi-Arid Savanna Depends On Topoedaphic Factors And Land Management, Dirac L. Twidwell Jr, Carissa L. Wonkka, Charles A. Taylor, Chris B. Zou, Jeremiah J. Twidwell, William E. Rogers

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

Questions: How do recent patterns of drought-induced woody plant mortality in Texas semi-arid savanna compare to the extended drought of the 1950s? Does the relative composition of the woody plant community shift ubiquitously across the landscape following woody plant mortality and dieback or are shifts dependent on differences among species, soils, land use and plant demography?

Location: Texas Agrilife Research Station, Sonora, Texas, USA (30.1° N 100.3° W).

Methods: Following an exceptional drought from 1951 to 1957, a study was conducted to quantify rates of mortality for various woody plant species. In 2011, we repeated this study within three long-term …

Timber Talk, Vol. 52, No. 1, February 1, 2014

Timber Talk: Nebraska Forest Industry Newsletter

Lumber Market News; Hardwood Lumber Price Trends—Green; Hardwood Lumber Price Trends—Kiln Dried; Hardwood Lumber Market History—Green; Lumber Abbreviations; Timber Talk Editor Retiring; North American Pellet Exports Continue to Rise; Wood: Fastest Growing Heating Fuel in America; EAB Quarantine Updates; Chinese Wood Demand Expected to Rise 50% by 2015; Nebraska Forestry Spotlight; The Ancient Art of Cooperage; The Trading Post; Timber Sales

Growth Of Black Walnut In Southeast Nebraska, Benjamin A. Loseke, Dennis M. Adams

Nebraska Forest Service: Publications

Black walnut (Juglans nigra L.), within the family Juglandaceae, is a premier hardwood timber species in the United States. Its native range encompasses most of the eastern U.S., roughly extending from eastern South Dakota and eastern Texas on its western edge to Massachusetts and western Florida in the east (Figure 1). The occurrence and productivity of black walnut on the western edge of its native range, including eastern Nebraska, is largely a function of available water during the growing season. However, black walnut has been extensively planted west and north of its native range. Studies have shown black walnut can …

Building Trust, Establishing Credibility, And Communicating Fire Issues With The Public, Josh Mcdaniel

Joint Fire Science Program Digests

With more people than ever living in the vicinity of the wildland-urban interface, communicating wildland fire management activities and building trust with the public is paramount for safety. Although the time and resources it takes to build and maintain the public’s trust may seem daunting, it may be one of the most important factors determining the long-term viability of a fire management program. Trust is built over time through personal relationships with citizens and communities and also by demonstrating competence and establishing credibility. When trust and confidence have been established, managers can enjoy strong support of fire and fuels management …