Yarding delays add significantly to the time and cost required to obtain a given quantity
of timber. In this study, they increased total yarding time by as much as 28 percent. As yarding system complexity increases, the frequency of delays can also be expected to increase. For one balloon yarding...
“Quality is Job 1”—this slogan is familiar to many people because it was used by Ford Motor Company for nearly 20 years. All businesses know the importance of quality—with respect to quality of products and quality of service. However, knowing specifically how to manage for quality is another matter. Here...
Public relations is a key element of any company’s communications portfolio. For entrepreneurs, PR may be especially important because it comes at no direct cost and has a low total cost. This document outlines key principles of PR, illustrated by an example of a small sawmiller.
The success of your business will strongly depend on what price tag you attach to your products—and whether your customers are willing to pay this price. Hence your strategic marketing planning should include considerations about how to adequately price your products/services right at the start. After reading this publication, you...
By nature, most entrepreneurs are "doers" rather than "planners." At the same time, we know that successful organizations, regardless of their size, must plan for the future. High-level strategic planning such as establishing the long-term direction of the company is critical, but useless without a plan for implementation. This "implementation...
Improving existing and developing completely new products is an important part of maintaining a healthy business. This document outlines key principles of new product development, illustrated through the activities of a small sawmilling company.
This document outlines types and sources of information you might use in your marketing planning. A variety of sources are cataloged on the Oregon Wood Innovation Center web site. A concrete example from the experience of a local entrepreneur is provided.
Effective and consistent communication with your customers is vital and should be approached in a holistic manner driven by customer needs, your marketing strategies, and key characteristics of your operation. This document outlines important principles of marketing communication, illustrated throughout with examples from two small, hypothetical companies. A worksheet is...
The specification, inspection, and remedial treatment of utility poles are addressed. Included are discussions of enhancing specifications for improved performance, techniques for detecting decay and other defects, and chemical treatments available for arresting decay of poles in service.
Breast-high stem sections were sampled from 56 western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla (Raf.) Sarg.) trees growing in 15 plots representing a wide range of tree and site conditions in northwestern Oregon. Growth and wood density traits of individual rings were measured via X-ray densitometry, and relationships of ring density and its...
We evaluated effects of chemical fertilizer, spacing, and interplanted nitrogen-fixing trees on wood density and diameter growth of 15-year-old Eucalyptus saligna trees. The trees were grown in silvicultural trials established on former sugarcane land on the island of Hawaii. Elevation was 480 m, slopes were gentle, and annual rainfall averaged...
The Willamette Valley (WV) race of ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) is being widely planted for timber in the Willamette Valley, western Oregon, because it grows in habitats that are either too wet or too dry for Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii). Compared to the eastern Cascade Mountains (CM), the WV has 3...
The forest-products industries are most important to the state of Oregon. Oregon leads the nation in the production of plywood, lumber, and particle board. More than half of softwood plywood production in the United States came from Oregon at the time of this survey, and more than a fifth of...
Like most ecological communities, aspen (Populus tremuloides) forests are influenced by a synergy of bottom-up (resources-driven) and top-down (predator-driven) processes. Since the 1920s, ecologists have observed the decline of many aspen communities throughout the Intermountain West. The extent and possible drivers of this decline are topics of much recent scientific...
To learn the effect of wind on a species native to a windy site, I compared germination, seedling survival, seedling form, and the force required to uproot seedlings in a wind-exposed and a wind-sheltered site. In February 1992, the sand dune perennial Lupinus arboreus Sims. was planted in wind-exposed and...
Herein, we posit a link between the ecological extinction of wolves in the American West
and the expansion in distribution, increased abundance, and inflated ecological influence
of coyotes. We investigate the hypothesis that the release of this mesopredator from wolf
suppression across much of the American West is affecting, via...
Scientists use a large crane to gather samples from the tops of trees. These samples will be tested for turgor in an attempt to explain why trees stop growing. Featuring Dr. Barbara Bond, Dr. Rick Meinzer, and R.A. Dave Woodruff.
Scientists seek to explore the relationship between land use and nitrogen levels at different places along the Calapooia River. Featuring Bill Floyd and Dr. Stephen Schoenholtz.
To guide the future development of CO₂-atmospheric inversion modeling systems, we analyzed the errors arising from prior information about terrestrial ecosystem fluxes. We compared the surface fluxes calculated by a process-based terrestrial ecosystem model with daily averages of CO₂ flux measurements at 156 sites across the world in the FLUXNET...
Wood-plastic composites are made out of recycled materials such as pallets and milk jugs. Combining these materials offers a way to reduce waste and create a durable material. Simonsen and Kai-Chang Li work to create stronger, more affordable composites. Featuring Dr. John Simonsen and Dr. Kai-Chang Li.
Recent natural disasters around the world including
both tsunamis and hurricanes, have highlighted the inability
of wood buildings to withstand wave and surge
loading during these extreme events. Little is known
about the interaction between coastal residential light-frame
wood buildings and wave and surge loading because
often little is left...
Wood-plastic composites are generally presumed to be inherently more resistant to moisture uptake than solid wood, but there is little data on the relative rates of moisture uptake in these materials over time. Trex[R] and Strandex[R] deck sections were immersed in water for up to 215 days, then sections were...
This article examines visitor perceptions of voluntary environmental programs (VEPs) at the Mt. Bachelor ski area in Oregon, USA by examining what they know about VEPs, how these programs influence motivations to visit this area currently and in the future, and how place attachment, value orientations, and specialization influence these...
To determine if squirrels (Sciurus douglasii var.) cut cones before the seeds are ripe, a series of collection points was established in the Willamette Valley and the Cascade Mountains in the summer of 1954. The areas were inspected at intervals during August, September and October of 1954, and freshly cut...
This bibliography represents selected literature pertinent to interaction studies of vegetation-seedling competition in reforestation; it is not a complete review of the scientific literature.
"Control of competing vegetation during establishment is one of the key links in the chain of events leading to a new plantation and, ultimately, a productive forest resource. Experience has repeatedly shown that, without adequate site preparation, reforestation efforts almost inevitably will fail. Vegetation control during the establishment period by...
Six 40-year-old red alders (Alnus rubra Bong.) were harvested from a mixed stand of A. rubra and big-leaf maple (Acer macrophyllum Pursh) in the Oregon Coast Range to evaluate variation in their wood characteristics at two heights. Because the trees had a slight lean (4 to 14°), we sampled along...
Black cottonwood (Populus trichocarpa Torr. & Gray) cuttings were collected from five Oregon provenances along a north-south gradient. Cuttings from each provenance were grown for 1 year at two locations, one on the Willamette Valley floor and the other on the Valley margin. Survival at both locations was poor. Stem...
The steadily increasing costs of raw materials, of the treated products, and of their replacement in service, as well as the steadily shrinking supply of preferred species, prompted a forum at Oregon State University on May 15, 1973 "to encourage the use of western hemlock and western fuss for poles...
The emergence of a new generation of remote sensing and geopositioning technologies, as well as increased capabilities in image processing, computing, and inferential techniques, have enabled the development and implementation of increasingly efficient and cost-effective multilevel sampling designs for forest inventory. In this paper, we (i) describe the conceptual basis...
Lidar is currently the most accurate method for remote estimation of forest structure, but it has limited spatial and temporal coverage. Conversely, Landsat data are more widely available, but exhibit a weaker relationship with structure under medium to high leaf area conditions. One potentially valuable means of enhancing the relationship...
Airborne laser scanning, collected in a sampling mode, has the potential to be a valuable tool for estimating the biomass resources available to support bioenergy production in rural communities of interior Alaska. In this study, we present a methodology for estimating forest biomass over a 201,226-ha area (of which 163,913...
Large quantities of smaller diameter materials are available in the overstocked forests of eastern Oregon and Washington, but the costs of removing these materials and the long distances from markets sharply reduce the potential of this resource. Failure to thin these forests will sharply increase the likelihood of catastrophic wildfires....
Urbanites who own forest land belong to a larger category of owners often referred to as small woodland owners. As a group, small woodland owners have been the subject of much investigation. Little research, however, has focused specifically on urban-dwelling owners who, as defined by the Census Bureau, live in...
In a multilevel study to determine limits to underplanted conifer seedling growth, Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirb.) Franco), grand fir (Abies grandis (Dougl. ex D. Don) Lindl.), western redcedar (Thuja plicata Donn ex D. Don), and western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla (Raf.) Sarg.) seedlings were planted beneath second-growth Douglas-fir stands that had...
Flux estimates show that upward mixing of the deep-water nitrate pool accounts for more than 85% of the total new nitrogen input to the euphotic zone of Crater Lake. Because measured primary productivity (360 mg C m-2 d-1) is 10–30 times higher than a level supported solely by the input...
Two intermediate cuttings were made in a Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirb.) Franco) stand on the Wilark forest management research area in northwestern Oregon. Age of trees in the stand varied from 47 to 62 years at the first cutting. Crawler tractors were used in both extractions. In the first cutting,...
Retreating glaciers and the periglacial areas they vacate for organismal colonization produce a harsh environment of extreme radiation, nutrient limitations, and temperature oscillations. They provide a model system for studying mechanisms that drive establishment and early assembly of communities. Here, we synthesize more than twenty years of research at the...
Beginning with the inception of American art history as a formal discipline in the 1940s, the dominant mode of interpreting nineteenth-century American landscape painting has been to view aspects of the landscape as symbols for grand cultural, religious, national, and moral narratives. While this method of interpretation highlights some key...
This planning guide is the outcome of an international collaboration of researchers and practitioners/field managers working in communities at risk of wildfire in three countries. Initially, the team of social scientists from Australia, Canada, and the United States utilized the collective research literature to examine factors that influence stakeholder trust....
The high decay resistance of western redcedar (Thuja plicata Donn) is due to the presence of toxic extractives, called tropolones, in the heartwood. Therefore, tropolone content may be used as an indicator of decay resistance. With increment core-sized samples of western redcedar heartwood, we used gas chromatography to measure tropolone...
When large carnivores are extirpated from ecosystems that evolved with apex predators, these systems can change at the herbivore and plant trophic levels. Such changes across trophic levels are called cascading effects and they are very important to conservation. Studies on the effects of reintroduced wolves in Yellowstone National Park...
The files are zipped and will need to be unzipped prior to viewing. Images are contained within 8 sub-folders: Crystal Creek Riparian Sep 2010, Crystal Creek Uplands Sep 2010, Lamar River Riparian Sep 2010, Lamar River Uplands Sep 2010, Rose Creek Riparian Sep 2010, Rose Creek Uplands Set 2010, Slough...
Uses of outdoor natural areas, like National Forests in the United States, have been undergoing change. Some changes, including criminal activities and domestic terrorism, may have quite important impacts to outdoor enthusiasts and managers. Activities include some relatively traditional management challenges, like arson and thefts, and newer challenges, such as...
To examine whether stream nitrogen concentrations in forested reference catchments have
changed over time and if patterns were consistent across the USA, we synthesized up to 44 yr
of data collected from 22 catchments at seven USDA Forest Service Experimental Forests.
Trends in stream nitrogen presented high spatial variability both...
Volume I: TREES (Timber Resource Economic Estimation System), a forest management and harvest scheduling model, is comprehensively described in the first of a four-volume series. Even- or uneven-aged forest inventories form basic resource units (BRUs), entered by age class or size and diameter classes; stocking level; and management intensity. Management...
The ratio of live crown length to tree height (crown ratio; CR) is often used as an important predictor variable for tree level growth equations, particularly for multi-species and multi-layered stands. Also, CR indicates tree vigour and can be an important habitat variable. Measurement of CR for each tree can...
Both the structure and composition of naturally generated early-seral forests in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) can be profoundly different than that of more developed forest seres, especially in the period after a major disturbance but before conifers re-develop a closed canopy. While it is reasonable to suggest that the unique...
Harvesting productivity rates and costs were determined for three
silvicultural treatments used in commercial ground-based thinning of
young stands to achieve timber management objectives and enhance
wildlife habitat. Treatment definitions were based on residual trees
per acre (tpa) after thinning. The treatments were light thin (115
residual tpa), light thin...
We sought to improve net ecosystem exchange (NEE) estimates for a tall, dense, mature Douglas-Fir forest in the Oregon Coast range characterized by weak flows, systematic wind directional shear, and limited turbulent mixing throughout the diurnal period. We used eddy covariance (EC) observations at two levels and concurrent biological measurements...
The nonexponential phosphorescence decay of a highly folded form of poly-riboadenylic acid (poly rA) with noncovalently bound dye is explained by a novel application of a well-known theory of electronic excitation transfer based on the Förster mechanism. This theory, originally used to describe singlet-singlet energy transfer from donor molecules to...
In this analysis, volume-flow and market-based models of the western Oregon timber sector are developed. The volume-flow model finds the maximum, long-term, even-flow level of cut for each ownership (industry and non-industrial private forest). The market model simulates the interaction of log demand and timber owner supply to find the...
We analyzed 45 years of data collected from three ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa Douglas ex P. Lawson & C. Lawson) levels-of-growing-stock installations in Oregon (OR) and northern California (CA), USA, to determine the effect of stand density regimes on stand productivity and mortality. We found that periodic annual increment (PAI)...
Large-scale commercial thinning of young forests in the Pacific Northwest is currently promoted on public lands to accelerate the development of late-seral forest structure for the benefit of wildlife species such as northern spotted owls (Strix occidentalis caurina) and their prey, including the northern flying squirrel (Glaucomys sabrinus). Attempts to...
Background: Management strategies have been proposed to minimise the effects of climate
change on forest resilience.
Aims: We investigated the Pacific Northwest US region forest carbon balance under current
practices, and changes that may result from management practices proposed for the region’s
34 million ha of forests to mitigate climate...
The effects of a range of thermoperiods and soil temperatures upon growth of Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirb.) Franco) seedlings were studied. The seeds, of varieties glauca and menziesii, came from eight widely separated areas. Plants from both varieties made maximum growth with soil and air temperatures between 18 and 24...
The authors describe a consistent and theoretically sound methodology for evaluating nonmarket uses of forest resources, particularly those associated with recreation. The analytical methodology is applied to a forest management unit. Present net worth of developed campgrounds and dispersed recreation activities on Oregon State Department of Forestry Lands in 1977...
Almost universally, forest inventory and monitoring databases are incomplete, ranging from missing data for only a few records and a few variables, common for small land areas, to missing data for many observations and many variables, common for large land areas. For a wide variety of applications, nearest neighbor (NN)...
The organizational capacity of natural resource collaborative groups can be an important factor in how effective they are at meeting their goals. This brief reviews the leadership committees of five forest collaboratives working on similar issues in eastern Oregon. It is intended to help new and existing groups best utilize...
a. Overview -- b. Vine maple : Acer circinatum Pursh -- c. Red alder : Alnus rubra Bong. -- d. Tanoak : Lithocarpus densiflorus (Hook & Arn.) Rehd. -- e. Salmonberry : Rubus spectabilis Pursh -- f. Glossary -- g. Associated literature.
As the frequency and intensity of wildfires continue to occur in the West, so does the need for measures intended to improve firefighter safety; public safety; and the protection of property, resources, and wildlife. Furthermore, as human activity in the expanding Wildland Urban Interface increases, so does the need for...
This note was prepared to answer the questions most of ten asked by foresters concerned about the porcupine and its control. The literature was reviewed for information on the animal's life history and the extent of damage in other areas. Direct field work reported was done primarily near Medford, Oregon,...
Stakeholders in the southern Blue Mountains have reported a need for a scientific review of the northern goshawk (Accipiter gentilis atricapillus; hereafter, goshawk) in relation to dry forest restoration and management activities. Here, we provide a compilation of relevant synthesis papers, existing peer-reviewed research, and goshawk monitoring efforts in the...
Trends in fee hunting in Oregon are examined, with particular emphasis on waterfowl in the western part of the state. Farmers with potential or existing waterfowl habitat in western Oregon were surveyed about their views on managing their lands for waterfowl. As incentives to such practices, they listed the financial...
High concentrations of the fumigant methylisothiocyanate (MITC) will effectively control decay fungi in large wood structures, but the fungitoxicity of low MITC concentrations and the influence of wood moisture content (MC) on its performance are not well understood. The MC of Douglas-fir heartwood greatly influenced the susceptibility of the decay...
Many protected areas or parks in developing countries have buffer zones at their
boundaries to achieve the dual goals of protecting park resources and providing
resource benefits to neighbouring people. Despite the prevalence of these zoning
policies, few behavioural models of people’s buffer zone use inform the sizing and
management...
Hydrological processes in the humid tropics differ from other regions in having greater energy inputs and faster rates of change, including human-induced change. Human influences on population growth, land use and climate change will profoundly influence tropical hydrology, yet understanding of key hydrological interactions is limited. We propose that efforts...