Forest Management Commons^™

Global Synthesis Of The Classifications, Distributions, Benefits And Issues Of Terracing, Wei Wei, Die Chen, Lixin Wang, Stefani Daryanto, Liding Chen, Yang Yu, Yonglong Lu, Ge Sun, Tianjiao Feng

United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service / University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Faculty Publications

For thousands of years, humans have created different types of terraces in different sloping conditions, meant to mitigate flood risks, reduce soil erosion and conserve water. These anthropogenic landscapes can be found in tropical and subtropical rainforests, deserts, and arid and semiarid mountains across the globe. Despite the long history, the roles of and the mechanisms by which terracing improves ecosystem services (ESs) remain poorly understood. Using literature synthesis and quantitative analysis, the worldwide types, distributions, major benefits and issues of terracing are presented in this review. A key terracing indicator, defined as the ratio of different ESs under terraced …

Scanning The Future Of Wildfire: Resilience Ahead…Whether We Like It Or Not?, Rachel Clark

Joint Fire Science Program Digests

The field of so-called “futures research” provides researchers and stakeholders in a given subject area or system a way to map out and plan for alternate possible scenarios of the future. A recent research project supported by the Joint Fire Science Program brought together futures researchers and wildfire specialists to envision what the future holds for wildfire impacts and how the wildfire community may respond to the complex suite of emerging challenges. The consensus of the project’s foresight panel suggests that an era of resilience is ahead: but that this resilience may come either with a very high cost (after …

Ecosystem Services Of Woody Crop Production Systems, Ronald S. Zalesny Jr., John A. Stanturf, Emile S. Gardiner, James H. Perdue, Timothy M. Young, David R. Coyle, William L. Headlee, Gary S. Bañuelos, Amir Hass

United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service / University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Faculty Publications

Short-rotation woody crops are an integral component of regional and national energy portfolios, as well as providing essential ecosystem services such as biomass supplies, carbon sinks, clean water, and healthy soils. We review recent USDA Forest Service Research and Development efforts from the USDA Biomass Research Centers on the provisioning of these ecosystem services from woody crop production systems. For biomass, we highlight productivity and yield potential, pest susceptibility, and bioenergy siting applications. We describe carbon storage in aboveground woody biomass and studies assessing the provision of clean and plentiful water. Soil protection and wildlife habitat are also mentioned, in …

Agroforestry Horizons: Experiences And Reflections: Report-Out, Steve Rasmussen

United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service / University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Faculty Publications

The USDA National Agroforestry Center (NAC) is charting a course for the next five years. As part of this process, NAC and the USDA Interagency Agroforestry Team hosted a meeting of leaders in the fields of agroforestry, agriculture, and forestry, from government, universities, and the private sector, to share experiences and insights on agroforestry opportunities and challenges. The meeting occurred on April 27th and 28th, 2016, in Washington, DC, and entailed presentations and discussions on current and potential roles of agroforestry in supporting water quality, soil health, economic diversification, food security, and pollinator/wildlife habitat. This report-out provides a summary of …

Riparian Trees And Aridland Streams Of The Southwestern United States: An Assessment Of The Past, Present, And Future, D. Max Smith, Deborah M. Finch

United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service / University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Faculty Publications

Riparian ecosystems are vital components of aridlands within the southwestern United States. Historically, surface flows influenced population dynamics of native riparian trees. Many southwestern streams has been altered by regulation, however, and will be further affected by greenhouse warming. Our analysis of stream gage data revealed that decreases in volume of annual discharge and mean peak discharge and a shift to earlier peak discharge will occur in the Southern Rockies region of Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. These changes will likely decrease rates of reproduction and survival of cottonwood (Populus fremontii and Populus deltoides ssp. wislizenii), Goodding's willow …

Review Of Broad-Scale Drought Monitoring Of Forests: Toward An Integrated Data Mining Approach, Steven P. Norman, Frank H. Koch, William W. Hargrove

United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service / University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Faculty Publications

Efforts to monitor the broad-scale impacts of drought on forests often come up short. Drought is a direct stressor of forests as well as a driver of secondary disturbance agents, making a full accounting of drought impacts challenging. General impacts can be inferred from moisture deficits quantified using precipitation and temperature measurements. However, derived meteorological indices may not meaningfully capture drought impacts because drought responses can differ substantially among species, sites and regions. Meteorology-based approaches also require the characterization of current moisture conditions relative to some specified time and place, but defining baseline conditions over large, ecologically diverse regions can …

Conditions Inside Fisher Dens During Prescribed Fires; What Is The Risk Posed By Spring Underburns?, Craig M. Thompson, Kathryn L. Purcell

United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service / University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Faculty Publications

The use of spring prescribed fires to reduce accumulated fuel loads in western forests and facilitate the return of natural fire regimes is a controversial topic. While spring burns can be effective at reducing fuel loads and restoring heterogeneous landscapes, concerns exist over the potential impacts of unnaturally timed fires to native species. To protect native wildlife from disturbance during critical periods, limited operating periods (LOPs) are often implemented. However when LOPs for multiple species are combined into an integrated management plan, very few time windows for implementing prescribed fires remain. The use of spring burns is often effectively eliminated, …

Financial Investment Management For Forest Sustainability, Zarina Ismailova

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This is paper is discussion about main problems of forest management, whether financial investment has a substantial impact on the long term perspective of forest landscape restoration and, more specifically, what strategy and what financial options are available to make the forest projects more sustainable. A few relevant questions to ask are: who are the main actors in the implementation of FLR projects; which steps have to be taken; and, which financial options would more suitable and would be feasible to implement. There are three main parts of this research to be investigated:

1. forest issues along with their respective solutions, …

Density Management In Young Western Larch Stands: Tree Growth, Stand Yield, And Carbon Storage 54 Years After Thinning, Michael S. Schaedel

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Long-term silvicultural experiments can be used to test novel ecological hypotheses and answer contemporary management questions that were not envisioned at study initiation. We used a 54-year old western larch precommercial thinning (PCT) study in northwest Montana to examine two sets of questions: (1) how different PCT regimes affect long-term stand yield and tree growth, and (2) how PCT affects total aboveground carbon (C) storage and distribution among C pools. The study has three target densities (494 trees ha^-1, 890 trees ha^-1, and 1680 trees ha^-1) and three numbers of entries to achieve those …

A Case For Untrammeledness As The Foundational Goal Of Wilderness Management, Robert A. Mcglothlin

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis addresses the quandary faced by wilderness managers in a time of heightening anthropogenic change, who are tasked with the conflicting goals of leaving wilderness untrammeled from management control, while simultaneously maintaining natural conditions free from human influence. I explain how this debate between conflicting management goals reflects a deeper rift between two competing philosophical paradigms of wilderness stewardship, which I term the Naturalness- paradigm and the Untrammeledness-paradigm. The Naturalness-paradigm embraces a techno-centric view of wilderness stewardship that exalts the role of managers in shaping wilderness ecosystems, whose persistence it considers to be dependent upon human provisioning. The Untrammeledness-paradigm …

Long-Term Impacts Of Fuel Treatments On Tree Growth And Aboveground Biomass Accumulation In Ponderosa Pine Forests Of The Northern Rocky Mountains, Kate A. Clyatt

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In western North America, many low-elevation, dry forest types historically experienced frequent, low-severity fires. However, European settlement and fire suppression policies have contributed to over a century of fire exclusion, substantially altering forest structure and composition. There is considerable interest in restoring fire resilient characteristics to these forests through fuel reduction treatments. One limitation of current research on the impacts of fuel treatments is treatment longevity, as few studies have been able to quantify long-term responses to commonly applied treatments. This research evaluated tree growth and aboveground biomass responses 23 years after treatment in two silvicultural installations with different underburning …

Climate And Bark Beetle Effects On Forest Productivity — Linking Dendroecology With Forest Landscape Modeling, Alec M. Kretchun, E. Louise Loudermilk, Robert M. Scheller, Matthew Hurteau, Soumaya Belmecher

Environmental Science and Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

In forested systems throughout the world, climate influences tree growth and aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP). The effects of extreme climate events (i.e., drought) on ANPP can be compounded by biotic factors (e.g., insect outbreaks). Understanding the contribution of each of these influences on growth requires information at multiple spatial scales and is essential for understanding regional forest response to changing climate. The mixed conifer forests of the Lake Tahoe Basin, California and Nevada, provide an opportunity to analyze biotic and abiotic influences on ANPP. Our objective was to evaluate the influence of moisture stress (climatic water deficit, CWD) and …

Invasibility Of Three Major Non-Native Invasive Shrubs And Associated Factors In Upper Midwest U.S. Forest Lands, W. Keith Moser, Zhaofei Fan, Mark H. Hansen, Michael K. Crosby, Shirley X. Fan

United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service / University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Faculty Publications

We used non-native invasive plant data from the United States Forest Service’s Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program, spatial statistical methods, and the space (cover class)-for-time approach to quantify the invasion potential and success (‘‘invasibility”) of three major invasive shrubs (multiflora rose, non-native bush honeysuckles, and common buckthorn) in broadly classified forest-type groups in seven Upper Midwest states. Smoothed maps of presence and cover percent showed a strong clustering pattern for all three invasive shrubs despite their different ranges. The species are clustered around major cities or urban areas (e.g., Chicago, Illinois, and Des Moines, Iowa), indicating the potential role …

Comparing Economic Returns Of Red Pine Plantation Thinning Scenarios Using Forest Vegetation Simulator (Fvs), Curtis L. Vanderschaaf, Gordon Holley, Andrew Arends, Joshua Adams, Donald Deckard

Journal of the Minnesota Academy of Science

Red pine (Pinus resinosa Ait) plantations are an important cover type of Department of Natural Resources (DNR) lands because of relatively high yields and economic value. Out of the approximate 400,000 acres of Minnesota red pine plantations one-fifth of the acreage is managed by the DNR. The DNR recently established a policy to rescind purposeful management to manage all red pine plantations to extended rotation ages, or rotation ages beyond those maximizing economic returns or biological yields. With recent state budget issues, DNR management is under greater scrutiny by the public, particularly on School Trust lands. Hence, most red pine …

Long-Term Effects Of Forestry Best Management Practices On Hydrology And Water Chemistry In Three Appalchian Headwater Catchments, Kameryn I. Wright

Theses and Dissertations--Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering

In 1982, a study was initiated in the Field Branch watershed, in the University of Kentucky’s Robinson Forest, to evaluate forestry best management practice (BMP) effectiveness after intensive harvesting. The study utilized a paired watershed approach on three adjacent Field Branch subcatchments. One subcatchment was left as the control, one had BMPs implemented (including a 50-ft undisturbed buffer along the stream), and one was clear-cut to the stream’s banks without the use of BMPs (i.e. logger’s choice). Prior research has shown that logging can negatively impact watershed functions by altering stream hydrology, geomorphology, water quality, and instream habitat. Thus, the …

Effects Of Wildfire And Post-Fire Salvage Logging On Rill Networks And Sediment Delivery In California Forests, Will Olsen

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Wildfires can increase soil erosion by orders of magnitude over rates in unburned forests and negatively impact aquatic resources. Rill erosion is a dominant erosion and sediment transport mechanism in burned forests, and hydrologically connected rills can form networks on burned hillslopes. At the swale scale (< 10,000 m²), little is known about how rill networks develop under different burn severities over time, their relationship with sediment yields, and the effect of post-fire salvage logging on rill networks and sediment yields.

The first study assessed rill networks and sediment yields in three burn severities in the inland Coast Range of …

Vegetation Diversity In Natural And Restored Forested Wetland Sites In Southeast Arkansas, C. J. Sheldon, R. L. Ficklin, K. P. Fawley, M. W. Fawley, M. Bataineh, A. S. Nelson, S. Wilson

Journal of the Arkansas Academy of Science

The loss of forested wetlands in the Lower Mississippi River Alluvial Valley in Arkansas has altered regional vegetation communities. Multiple restoration projects have been established in this region to restore wetlands and the services they provide. In order to return these functions to the environment, microtopographic features were constructed in 2001 at Bob White Memorial Wetlands Research and Teaching Station (Bob White). Vegetation diversity was examined at Cut-Off Creek Wildlife Management Area (Cutoff), a naturally forested wetland, and Bob White, an area formally converted to cropland that is now undergoing forest wetland restoration. Vegetation diversity is one way to determine …

Ninety-Two Years Of Tree Growth And Death In A Second-Growth Coast Redwood Forest, Benjamin Iberle

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Mature second-growth coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) forests are an important and uncommon resource in the redwood region. Development of second-growth redwood forests beyond rotation age (~50 years) is not well understood. Continuous long-term data are especially lacking, considering that the maximum possible age of second-growth stands is now over 150 years. Two permanent observation plots in Arcata, CA, established in 1923 by Woodbridge Metcalf and last measured in 1990, provide a unique opportunity to examine the development of coast redwood forest regenerating after logging in ~1880. We surveyed the Metcalf plots using modern methods and assembled a complete …

The Changes In Woodlot Land Cover From 1988 To 2006 Within Private/Farmland In Hancock County, Ohio, Louis C. Birchall

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The amount of woodlots in Ohio have dramatically decreased since the introduction of settlers into the State. The removal of forest for open space, urban areas, fuel and resources was key to this change. Since the development of the economy to a more service based industry in recent years, woodlots have begun to return in certain areas. This research shows the change in woodlot patterns in Hancock County, Ohio from 1988 to 2006.

The analysis was done by classifying the data into 'woodlot' and 'other land use' by using image segmentation and manual editing processes. Accuracy checks were conducted on …

Quantifying Effects Of Quaking Aspen Silvicultural Treatments On Aspen Regeneration And Residual Growth, Philip W. Williams

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

Many quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides) populations are in decline across the western United States, a trend likely driven by ongoing climate change and past management that has led to increased competition with conifers. Restoration of aspen is a management goal potentially achievable through active forest management, but treatment effects on regeneration and residual growth have not been comprehensively studied. This project examined if removal of competing conifers altered aspen regeneration density, ungulate browsing, and residual adult aspen diameter growth using a control-impact study design. Sampling occurred at the Burnt Fork (ten treatments, four controls) and Bandy (seven treatments, four controls) …