Forest Sciences Commons^™

Risk Of Oak Wilt Expanding Northward: Examining Nitidulidae Vector Communities And Host Phenology Beyond The Current Disease Range, Kathleen E. Bershing

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Oak wilt is a fatal fungal pathogen to oak trees, caused by the fungus Bretziella fagacearum. This fungus targets oak species (Quercus spp.), where members of the red oak group (sect. Lobatae) are at greatest risk of mortality. Oak wilt is widespread throughout the eastern United States, currently present in 24 states. Recently in 2023, oak wilt was detected in trees for the first time in Canada. Although removed from the locations of the first Canadian detections, there is continual concern that the range of oak wilt is at risk for expansion northward. This is further evident …

The Everyday Scientist: Down In The Weeds In The Heart Of The South, Pamela Zendt

Master's Projects

The Everyday Scientist: Down in the Weeds in the Heart of the South is a creative nonfiction capstone project that was released as a book. The narrative documents my two-year journey as a community scientist and explores how ordinary people contribute meaningfully to scientific research in the natural world. Rooted in my desire to connect my passion for the outdoors with the goals of the Master of Arts in Professional Writing program, this project illustrates that environmental science is not only for trained professionals. Instead, it thrives on the curiosity, dedication, and participation of volunteers who follow established protocols, collect …

Firelog: An Open-Source, Low-Cost System For Temperature Logging During Wildland Fires With High Spatial And Temporal Resolution, Nipuna Chamara, Yufeng Ge, Sabrina E. Russo

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

Measuring flame, air, and soil temperatures during wildland fires, including wildfires and controlled burns in land management contexts, is crucial for research and applications in fire ecology, safety, and management in a wide array of ecosystems, from grasslands to forests. However, open-source and commercial systems are needed for measuring and logging flame and air temperatures that are user-friendly, economical, modular, and customizable. This paper details the design, development, and validation of the FireLog system. Laboratory validation experiments demonstrated high measurement accuracy, with a minimum coefficient of determination (R2) of 0.98 and the highest observed root mean square error (RMSE) of …

A Method For Empirically Assessing Small Area Estimators Via Bootstrap-Weighted K-Nearest-Neighbor Artificial Populations, With Applications To Forest Inventory, Grayson W. White, Jerzy Wieczorek, Zachariah W. Cody, Emily X. Tan, Jacqueline O. Chistolini, Kelly S. Mcconville, Tracey S. Frescino, Gretchen G. Moisen

Faculty Journal Articles

National Forest Inventories monitor forest attributes across a variety of spatial and temporal scales in a given country. Increased interest in reporting and management at smaller scales has driven National Forest Inventories to investigate and adopt small area estimation (SAE) due to the promise of increased precision at these scales. However, comparing and evaluating SAE models for a given application is inherently difficult. Typically, many areas lack enough data to check unit-level modeling assumptions or to assess unit-level predictions empirically; and no ground truth is available for checking area-level estimates. Design-based simulation from artificial populations can help with each of …

Refine Fuels Treatments In The Wildland–Urban Interface With Wildlife In Mind, Miles Becker, Catrin M. Edgeley, David Stoner

Human–Wildlife Interactions

Conserving urban tree and shrub cover provides many benefits for wildlife and people, yet often becomes a lower priority than fuels treatments to mitigate fire risk in the wildland–urban interface (WUI). We support the principle that considering multiple objectives on privately owned property is valuable and can be achieved. Data sharing and collaboration between wildfire experts and wildlife biologists could improve the quality and extent of managing both animals and fire. Furthermore, the adoption of statewide policy and municipal regulations for preventing wildfires in the WUI provides an opportunity to incorporate ecological functions in the same directives for a balanced …

Small Mammal Diet As An Indicator Of Lyme Disease And The Road To Endemicity In Michigan’S Upper Peninsula, Jacqueline E. Suits

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Lyme disease is expanding in the Upper Midwest due to climate change, forest degradation, and shifting wildlife communities. Small mammals are key reservoir hosts, and their foraging behavior offers insight into environmental conditions that sustain pathogen transmission. We used DNA metabarcoding to investigate small mammal diets across seasonal, spatial, and infection gradients in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. We identified dominant dietary plant and arthropod taxa, seasonal shifts, and slight variation by species, site, and Lyme infection status. Taxa associated with Lyme-positive individuals were primarily linked to moist, edge, and disturbed habitats, areas that also support ticks and disease spread. These results …

Rotten Through The Cores: What Decomposition Can Tell Us About Carbon Cycling, Eileen C. Reeves

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Sequestration of carbon (C) in forests means that the C is stored in the ecosystem and not emitted to the atmosphere, thus slowing the accumulation of greenhouse gases and mitigating the acceleration of manmade climate change. Quantifying the pools and fluxes of C in forests is therefore of considerable interest to landowners, policy makers, and scientists.

Decomposition is an ecological process central to the movement of C through ecosystems. This dissertation uses several techniques to help determine the factors influencing the speed of decomposition and long-term fate of decomposed plant material. In Chapter Two, phospholipid fatty acid analysis was used …

Linking Empirical Data And Numerical Simulation To Characterize Dynamic Fire Behavior Associated With Interacting Firelines, Marta Sergeevna Jerebets

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Understanding fuel pattern-fire process relationships is key for predicting fire behavior and effects with follow-on benefits to proactive fire management and model validation. To characterize dynamic fire behavior, this thesis leverages empirical data and numerical simulation through two complementary studies.

In the first study, longwave thermal sensors aboard unmanned aerial systems (UAS) were used to capture fine-scale fire behavior in two experimental grass burns. A novel paired design was used to quantify the effects of fuel arrangement on fire behavior with 3.66 m diameter treatments cut to a height of 0.15 m. The treatments ephemerally reduced fire rate of spread …

Bridging The Gap Between Plot-Level And Landscape-Scale Analysis For Wildfire Risk Assessment, Vanessa Leigh Niemczyk

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Remote sensing technology has advanced greatly over the past couple of decades proving its ability to aid in wildfire risk assessment and improve our understanding of forest structure and fuel inventory across the landscape. While some aerial and satellite sensors perform better than others, they all have a common weakness, their reduced ability to capture understory fuels with high detail. Terrestrial laser scanning is an emerging solution due to its understory perspective. This research leverages the beneficial aspects of both terrestrial laser scanning and various aerial- or satellite-based remote sensing platforms (aerial laser scanning, digital aerial photogrammetry, and Sentinel-2) to …

Ineligible Partners: Tribal Nations And Cooperative Federalism In The Historical Development Of National Forest Law And Policy, James H. Baker

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Lands within the National Forest System (NFS), like all federal public lands, are rooted in Aboriginal Title and were once exclusively inhabited by Indigenous peoples and communities. Through the process of treaty-making, the federal government amassed millions of acres of ceded Tribal lands, many of which are now managed by federal public land agencies, including 194 million acres managed by the U.S. Forest Service (USFS). Several Tribes reserved various use and property rights on these lands that are protected by the U.S. Constitution’s Treaty and Supremacy Clauses. The federal government also has an overarching trust obligation to Tribes – a …

A Retrospective Assessment Of Post-Fire Planting In The Us: Aligning Actual And Optimal Planting Sites To Address The Reforestation Gap, Lewis Faller

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The natural regeneration processes that maintain semi-arid North American conifer forests are being disrupted. Increasingly, large wildfires burn core areas beyond the typical seed dispersal range of surviving adult trees and even when seeds are present, climate conditions increasingly are unsuitable for conifer recruitment, establishment, and survival. The USDA Forest Service (USFS), mandated to maintain forest cover in response to harvest or disturbance, now faces a planting backlog of over 3.8 million acres. Here, we conduct a retrospective assessment (1986–2023) of USFS post-fire reforestation to evaluate (1) whether historical planting patterns align with the goal to close the national reforestation …

Acer Rubrum: Descending Towards Forest Dominance, Elyssa L. Pearson, Christopher M. Gough

UROP Posters

Acer rubrum, more commonly known as the red maple, is a hardwood, late successional species of tree commonly planted for its deciduous nature and vibrant coloring of its leaves in the beginning of autumn (Abrams, 1998). The species is very tolerant of varying light and soil moisture levels and often dominates sub and mid-canopy levels of hardwood forests (Missouri Botanical Gardens). It was hypothesized that as the I moved from an upland location to a lowland location near a wetland that the A. rubrum trees would be more productive and have a greater above ground biomass. This was not …

An Assessment Of The California Logging Workforce, Kendra Jean Gerstenberg

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

There is limited literature describing the capacity and capabilities of the logging workforce in California. This study examines the logging workforce in California to quantify the number of logging crews, assess demographic diversity, and evaluate capacity and capabilities. The target population was California Licensed Timber Operators (LTOs) who have the legal right to harvest timber. A survey was developed and distributed to LTOs on the CAL FIRE database. Surveys were also distributed at regional logging conferences or collected by phone. Data were analyzed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) and emergent coding for follow-up interviews was conducted. There …

An Evaluation Of Fuel Model Accuracy And Multi-Scale Mitigation Strategies In The Wildland-Urban Interface Of Southern Humboldt County, Julia I. Cavalli

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Strategic placement of fuel treatments is critical for mitigating wildfire risk and reducing potential structure losses in wildland-urban interface (WUI) communities. As wildfire activity accelerates across the western United States, the need to identify high-impact fuel treatment locations grows increasingly urgent. Concurrently, housing development in the WUI is expanding, intensifying the exposure of homes and infrastructure to wildfire threats. In response, many communities are looking to mitigate the likelihood and severity of losses during wildfire events. The success of these efforts depends, in part, on robust data to support strategic placement of effective treatments that reduce fuel availability.

This study …

Can We Help Coast Redwood Adapt To Climate Change? A Provenance Study On Genetic Variation And Climate Transfer Distance, Aidan J. Murphy

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

The climate is changing more rapidly than many species can adapt or migrate. Coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) is a unique, long-lived conifer and remains California’s most valuable and economically important timber species. The species is threatened in its natural range due to anthropogenic climate change and human activity. Redwood favors asexual reproduction which restricts its ability to migrate naturally. The consequences of asexual reproduction when faced with a rapidly changing climate may make some form of assisted migration necessary for long-lived organisms like redwood.

This study evaluates drivers of variation in redwood growth and the influence of climate …

The Role Of Floodplain Complexity In Wood Turtle Habitat Use, Laura S. Deming

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Wood turtles occupy cold, low-gradient riverine habitat throughout the northeastern United State and southeastern Canada. Stream alterations, such as dams, channel straightening, and floodplain development have diminished the natural hydrologic and sedimentation regimes that result in complex channel and floodplain geomorphology. Studies throughout the species’ range have quantified many aspects of their habitat, but none have quantified components of geomorphology of wood turtle sites. The goal of this study was to explore the role of stream channel and floodplain geomorphology in wood turtle habitat use, with specific objectives to (1) quantify components of stream channel and floodplain geomorphic complexity, (2) …

Modeling Neighborhoods As Fuel For Wildfire, Bryce Alan Young

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Wildfire models drive billions of dollars in risk mitigation efforts. However, the modeling community currently lacks a representative fuelscape on which to base simulations of fire spread in the built environment and the wildland-urban interface (WUI) where vegetation and structures act together as fuel for wildfire. This thesis advances wildfire risk modeling by addressing the underdeveloped representation of the built environment in existing frameworks. By identifying inconsistencies in how structure and defensible space features are defined and used across empirical studies, predictive indices, and fire spread models, this research lays the groundwork for standardized modeling approaches and feature selection (Chapter …

Machine Learning And Uass For Managing Autumn Olive (Elaeagnus Umbellata) On Reclaimed Surface Mines, Sean Michael Keane

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This research introduces an innovative approach for managing autumn olive (Elaeagnus umbellata) on reclaimed surface mines through the integration of machine learning algorithms and unmanned aerial systems. The proliferation of autumn olive presents significant ecological challenges on disturbed landscapes, necessitating more efficient detection and control methods. This study evaluated Random Forest classification and deep learning approaches using the U-Net architecture for identifying autumn olive across four phenological stages using high-resolution imagery. The RGB U-Net model achieved F1-scores of 0.927, 0.912, and 0.871 for autumn olive detection during peak, late, and senescence stages respectively, outperforming both multispectral and vegetation …

Identification, Mapping And Treatment Of The Invasive Rosa Multiflora Using Unmanned Aerial Systems And Machine Learning Models, Kylie Virginia Shaw

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Invasive species are introduced species that cause detrimental impacts to the native ecosystem or cause harm to human health. The work necessary for land managers to survey for and treat invasive species takes up limited time, labor, and financial resources. This study assesses how Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) and machine learning models can be used to make the identification, mapping, and treatment of invasive vegetation more efficient and effective. A UAS-mounted multispectral camera captured images of our target species, Rosa multiflora (multiflora rose), throughout its growing season in southwest Pennsylvania. A random forest machine learning model was trained on these …

Screening Herbicides For Use In Newly Established Short Rotation Coppice Shrub Willow Plantations, Alex Thomas Smith

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

A major setback for the establishment of short rotation coppice willow plantations is the control of competition from weeds. Weed competition has been found to cause increased mortality which lowers biomass yields when left uncontrolled. Mechanical weed control methods are the most used method of weed control, but their use can be complicated by cost, labor availability and site topography. Chemical weed control is also complicated by the fact that willow species are particularly sensitive to herbicides. Across three trials, we screen 11 herbicides for their potential to control weeds without significantly decreasing the vertical growth of willow trees. This …