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....