This study utilizes the Timber Assessment Market Model (TAMM) to examine the differences in Canadian softwood lumber market forecasts arising from econometric versus activity analysis supply curves. A restricted profit function approach is applied to three lumber producing regions using the most recent data available on costs, prices, and output...
Regional estimation of potential forest productivity is important to diverse applications, including biofuels supply, carbon sequestration, and projections of forest growth. Using PRISM (Parameter-elevation Regressions on Independent Slopes Model) climate and productivity data measured on a grid of 3356 Forest Inventory and Analysis plots in Oregon and Washington, we evaluated...
Few studies have examined the own-price elasticity of Canadian softwood lumber supply or output-adjusted factor demand elasticities over the past two decades, despite the utility of these measures in understanding producer response to tariffs, to market shifts (such as the decline in U.S. public harvest), and to changes in domestic...
As global climate changes over the next century, forest productivity is expected to change as well. Using PRISM climate and productivity data measured on a grid of 3356 plots, we developed a simultaneous autoregressive (SAR) model to estimate the impacts of climate change on potential productivity of Pacific Northwest (PNW)...
We describe the use of linked land-use and forest sector models to simulate the effects of carbon offset sales on private forest owners' land-use and forest management decisions in western Oregon (USA). Our work focuses on forest management decisions rather than afforestation, allows full forest sector price adjustment to land-use...
Full Text:
potential forest carbon offset sales program in western Oregon (USA)
Gregory S. Latta a, Darius M. Adams a
Growing stock inventory on industrial and nonindustrial private forest (NIPF) lands in eastern Oregon has declined over the past 20 yr, as harvesting and mortality losses to insects and disease have outpaced growth. Over the same time period, harvest rates on private lands have varied, with no distinct trend to...
We describe the use of linked land-use and forest sector models to simulate the effects of carbon offset sales on private forest owners' land-use and forest management decisions in western Oregon (USA). Our work focuses on forest management decisions rather than afforestation, allows full forest sector price adjustment to land-use...
We describe the use of linked land-use and forest sector models to simulate the effects of carbon offset sales on private forest owners' land-use and forest management decisions in western Oregon (USA). Our work focuses on forest management decisions rather than afforestation, allows full forest sector price adjustment to land-use...
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...
Commercial thinning operations can result in damage to residual stems. A literature review revealed that little was known about the effects of residual logging wounds with regard to rotation-age commercial conifers, particularly Douglas-fir. An experiment to examine fungal colonization of Douglas-fir following logging damage showed that while damage was significant...
Structure-property relationships have always underpinned the field of solid state chemistry; dependable structural descriptions are integral to understanding and controlling the physical properties of inorganic compounds old and new. While a handful of crystal structures are celebrated for their versatility, flexibility, and functionality, the existence of more exotic structures is...
This chapter is divided into three main sections. The first section discusses land cover map development. It begins by providing background information on the regional division of labor and the regional land cover legend. It then focuses on our land cover mapping methods, including a description of data sources, the...
In early August 2014, the municipality of Toledo, OH (USA) issued a ‘do not drink’ advisory on their water supply directly affecting over 400,000 residential customers and hundreds of businesses (Wilson, 2014). This order was attributable to levels of microcystin, a potent liver toxin, which rose to 2.5 μg L⁻¹...
This study considered regional forest policies for sequestering carbon in existing
forests in western Oregon. A model of log markets in western Oregon was employed to
examine the impacts of forest policy changes on future carbon stock, harvests, and
management activities. A carbon tax program, as a mitigation option for...
The development of a market for currently non-merchantable forest material, such as harvest residues of tops and limbs of trees or small diameter trees, has been suggested as a possible win-win solution that could: (i) provide a financial incentive to help motivate treatments to reduce wildfire risk or restore forest...
When a temporal trend in forest conditions is present, standard estimates from paneled forest inventories can be biased. Thus methods that use more recent remote sensing data to improve estimates are desired. Paneled inventory data from national forests in Oregon and Washington, U.S.A., were used to explore three nearest neighbor...
Population genetic structure is widespread in many organisms and can be found at small spatial scales. Fine-scale differentiation is the result of ecological and evolutionary processes working together to produce an overall pattern, but the relative importance of these factors in population differentiation is poorly understood. The goals of my...
Small-area estimation (SAE) is a concept that has considerable potential for precise estimation of forest ecosystem attributes in partitioned forest populations. In this study, several estimators were compared as SAE techniques for 12 counties in the northern Oregon Coast range. The estimators that were compared consisted of three indirect estimators,...
Breeding habitat of Harlequin ducks (Histrionicus
histrionicus) was studied in eastern Prince William Sound,
Alaska, during 1991 - 1993. Streams in Prince William
Sound were surveyed for Harlequin ducks and monitored with
mist nets. Physical characteristics of 24 Harlequin
breeding streams were compared to those of 24 streams not
used...
Increasingly, forest management and conservation plans require spatially explicit information within a management
or conservation unit. Forest biomass and potential productivity are critical variables for forest planning and
assessment in the Pacific Northwest. Their values are often estimated from ground-measured sample data. For
unsampled locations, forest analysts and planners lack...
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)...
Carbon sequestration is increasingly recognized as an ecosystem service, and forest management has a large potential to alter regional carbon fluxes − notably by way of harvest removals and related impacts on net ecosystem production (NEP). In the Pacific Northwest region of the U.S.,
the implementation of the Northwest Forest...
• Aims: Six sampling alternatives were examined for their ability to quantify selected attributes of snags and hardwoods in conifer-dominated riparian areas of managed headwater forests in western Oregon.
• Methods: Each alternative was simulated 500 times at eight headwater forest locations based on a 0.52-ha square stem map. The...
Pollination is an essential ecosystem service that sustains functioning ecosystems and aids in food production. In response to recent, widespread declines of managed and native bee populations, many land managers have shown interest in developing conservation and restoration plans for enhancing native bee habitat. However, there is a lack of...
Despite its importance to biodiversity and ecosystem function, patterns and drivers of regional scale variation in forest structure and development are poorly understood. We characterize structural variation, create a hierarchical classification of forest structure, and develop an empirically based framework for conceptualizing structural development from 11,091 plots across 25 million...
The western purple martin (Progne subis arboricola) is a species of conservation concern throughout the Pacific Northwest. In western Oregon, the purple martin nests in three major ecosystem types: inland open-water, coastal, and upland forest. The availability of suitable breeding habitat is a major limiting factor for western purple martin...
How complex traits evolve continues to be a major focus of evolutionary
investigation. A current topic of debate is the hypothesis that the phenotypic
integration of complex traits gives rise to evolutionary constraints. I studied two color
traits in the common garter snake, Thamnophis sirtalis, that show a high level...
Uneven-aged management has been suggested as a method for balancing biodiversity conservation and wood production goals from managed forests in a variety of regions. In coastal Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) forests of the Pacific Northwest, implementation of uneven-aged management is hindered by a lack of experience with uneven-aged silvicultural systems, including...
This dissertation consists of three essays on private landowners' response to incentives for carbon sequestration in forests. The first essay examines private landowner response to incentives for carbon sequestration through various combinations of intermediate management practices. The second essay focuses on agricultural landowners' willingness to participate in an incentive program...
Forest carbon (C) density varies tremendously across space due to the inherent heterogeneity of forest ecosystems. Variation of forest C density is especially pronounced in mountainous terrain, where environmental gradients are compressed and vary at multiple spatial scales. Additionally, the influence of environmental gradients may vary with forest age and...
The restoration of rivers and streams should be based on a
strong conceptual framework. Streams are developing systems. As
such, streams exhibit temporal behaviors that change with changing
stream environments. Underlying the dynamic development of streams is
potential capacity. Streams express this capacity as an array of
habitats over time...
The ability to non-destructively assess fish condition and subsequently track fish behavior and survival can be vital in understanding natural and anthropogenic stressors and sources of mortality, especially in populations of fish listed as threatened or endangered. I investigated the use of a quick, non-lethal, external examination technique to assess...
Anthropogenic land-cover change and climate change are the major drivers of the steep loss of avian biodiversity in past decades. Loss of avian biodiversity is predicted to result in the reduction of ecosystem services and ecological functions. Identifying avian population changes and the drivers of these trajectories is essential for...
One of the challenges often faced in forestry is the estimation of forest attributes for smaller areas of interest within a larger population. Small-area estimation (SAE) is a set of techniques well suited to estimation of forest attributes for small areas in which the existing sample size is small and...
Human alterations of landscapes take many forms, one of which is anthropogenic pollution. Mercury (Hg) is a complex contaminant because its uptake into the food web is not driven entirely by loading to the system; methylation is necessary to make Hg bioavailable and toxic to fish and wildlife. Because methylation...
The spawning habitat associated with fall chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus
tshawytscha) redd clusters was investigated in the Hanford Reach of the Columbia River.
A conceptual spawning habitat model is proposed that describes how geomorphic
features of river channels create hydraulic processes, including hyporheic flows, that
influence where salmon spawn in unconstrained...
Headwater streams and wetlands are integral components of watersheds that are critical for biodiversity, fisheries, ecosystem functions, natural resource-based economies, and human society and culture. These and other ecosystem services provided by intact and clean headwater streams and wetlands are critical for a sustainable future. Loss of legal protections for...
Using the historical range of forest conditions as a reference for managing landscapes has been proposed as a "coarse-filter" approach to biodiversity conservation. By emulating historical disturbance processes, it is thought that forest management can produce forest composition and structure similar to the conditions that once supported the native biota....
Society derives many critical and irreplaceable values from forests. With a growing global human population and rates of consumption, forests are under increasing pressure to provide all these values simultaneously. To meet societal demands for wood products, tree plantations are becoming increasingly common and are replacing native forests. Yet, forests...
Intensive forest management (IFM, dense conifer plantings and herbicide applications) may alter the characteristics of early seral plant communities that function as major habitat resources for a host of wildlife species, including cervid herbivores such as Cervus elaphus and Odocoileus hemionus. Such large herbivores can also substantially affect plant community...
The Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program conducts an annual inventory throughout the United States. In the western United States, 10% of all plots (one panel) are measured annually, and a moving average is used for estimating current condition and change of forest attributes while alternative methods are sought in...
Recent evidence suggests that population declines of some avian species may be driven primarily by reduced quantity and diversity of early-successional habitat on the breeding grounds. Increasing intensity of forest management on private lands and decreased harvest rates on federal lands has resulted in a loss of the diverse early-successional...
Wetland habitats are disappearing at an alarming rate and research is finding that establishment and creation of wetland habitat is generally unsuccessful. Typical mitigation strategies in the past have created multiple small isolated wetlands with little functioning habitat. Within Washington State, guidance and research recommends utilizing mitigation banks to compensate...
In order to decide whether or not to develop biomass energy facilities and where to best locate them, developers and investors need accurate assessments of fuel supply. This includes information about the distribution and concentration of fuel throughout the assessment area, the quality of fuel (form, moisture content, contaminant content,...
This thesis mainly consists of two parts: (1) comparing statistical modeling methods based on the area-based approach (ABA) for predicting forest inventory attributes using airborne light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data (Chapter 2), and (2) suggesting a new methodology fusing the individual tree detection (ITD) approach and the ABA for...
Contemporary forest management involves a more extensive and diverse suite of management objectives than was the case throughout much of the Twentieth Century. Heightened public and political awareness of local and global biodiversity decline, and interest in arresting these trends, has increased the emphasis on broad-based biodiversity conservation as an...
Fire-prone landscapes are not well studied as coupled human and natural systems (CHANS) and present many challenges
for understanding and promoting adaptive behaviors and institutions. Here, we explore how heterogeneity, feedbacks, and external
drivers in this type of natural hazard system can lead to complexity and can limit the development...
The management of federal forest lands in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) region changed in early 1990s when the
Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP) was adopted with the primary goal to protect old-growth forest and associated
species. A major decline in timber harvest followed, extending an earlier downward trend. The historic and...
Cavity tree and snag abundance data are highly variable and contain many zero observations. We predict cavity tree and snag abundance from variables that are readily available from forest cover maps or remotely sensed data using negative binomial (NB), zero-inflated NB, and zero-altered NB (ZANB) regression models as well as...
Biodiversity continues to decline in the face of increasing anthropogenic pressures such as habitat destruction, exploitation, pollution and introduction of alien species. Existing global databases of species’ threat status or population time series are dominated by charismatic species. The collation of datasets with broad taxonomic and biogeographic extents, and that...
Severe droughts occurred in the western United States during recent decades, and continued human greenhouse gas emissions are expected to exacerbate warming and drying in this region. We investigated the role of water availability in shaping forest carbon cycling and morphological traits in the eastern Cascade Mountains, Oregon, focusing on...
Severe droughts occurred in the western United States during recent decades, and continued human greenhouse gas emissions are expected to exacerbate warming and drying in this region. We investigated the role of water availability in shaping forest carbon cycling and morphological traits in the eastern Cascade Mountains, Oregon, focusing on...
In intensively managed forest plantations in the northern Oregon Coast Range, herbicides are often applied during site preparation and early stand regeneration to reduce competition for resources for planted conifer seedlings. In addition to reducing competition for crop trees, herbicide applications may affect soil processes including decomposition and nutrient cycling,...
Recent climatic warming trends and increases in the frequency and extent of wildfires have prompted much concern regarding the potential for rapid change in the structure and function of forested ecosystems around the world. Episodes of mortality in wildfires and insect outbreaks associated with drought have affected large areas and...
In this dissertation, I examine how the spatial configuration of forest ownership influences the risk-mitigating behavior of public and private forestland owners over time. I determine whether or not the predicted equilibrium outcomes are socially optimal and, if not, whether the introduction of regulation, liability, or private insurance would lead...
This dissertation has two objectives. The first objective is to determine where best to situate the study of mentoring (i.e. the 'making of scientists') on the landscape of the history of science and science studies. This task is accomplished by establishing mentoring studies as a link between the robust body...
Little is known on the importance of riparian areas to birds near small headwater streams in mesic forests. Progress towards understanding limiting factors that affect bird populations has been difficult because of lack of information beyond the breeding period. I compared bird assemblages between headwater riparian and upland areas throughout...
This report, required by state law under HB3543, provides a comprehensive assessment of the state of science of climate change as it pertains to Oregon, covering the physical, biological, and social dimensions. The first chapter summarizes the current state of knowledge of physical changes in climate and hydrology, focusing on...
A multidisciplinary team of scientists (Appendix 1) examined 10 of the 16 environmental benchmarks that are tracked by the Oregon Progress Board. The intent of the environmental benchmarks is to provide a fair assessment of the status and trends of Oregon's environmental health. The scientists were asked to clarify benchmark...
Climate change affects the choice of land-use not only through its direct effect on the productive potential of land, but also through human actions that alter the landscape. In this dissertation, I estimate current climate's effect on the economic net returns to alternative land-use systems in the United States. Then...
Understanding how wetland birds use habitat is pivotal to developing successful and
beneficial conservation strategies. Although it has been an ardent topic in forest
research for some time, how species interact with the spatial patterning of habitat
across a landscape (i.e., landscape structure) has been more or less neglected in...
Spatially explicit maps of habitat relationships have proven to be valuable tools for conservation and management applications including evaluating how and which species may be impacted by large scale climate change, ongoing fragmentation of habitat, and local land-use practices. Studies have turned to remote sensing datasets as a way to...
This annotated bibliography was prepared for the Salmon Anchor Habitat Work Group. This group was formed by the Oregon Department of Forestry to review and evaluate the Salmon Anchor Habitat Strategy as directed by the 2003 Oregon Legislature. The Salmon Anchor Habitat Strategy is a component of management plans developed...
The group of scientists that make up the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found in 2007 that the warming of Earth’s climate is unequivocal and largely due to human activity. Earth’s climate has changed in the past, though the recent magnitude and pace of changes are unprecedented in human existence....
Earth’s atmosphere is unequivocally warming due to CO₂ and other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from human activities and this is having widespread impacts on forest ecosystems that provide important services to human societies. Forest ecosystems help regulate atmospheric CO2 concentrations by sequestering carbon in tree biomass and soils, which is...
In 1746, Dr John Buchanan, a recently retired medical officer in the British Army, produced a manuscript, 'Regimental Practice, or a Short History of Diseases common to His Majesties own Royal Regiment of Horse Guards when abroad (Commonly called the Blews).' Revised almost until the time of Buchanan's death in...
Since at least the 1970s, rural areas in the western United States, as elsewhere across the country and world, have been subject to social, economic, and political forces that have resulted in novel demographic and land tenure trends when compared to previous decades. Collectively, these processes of restructuring have created...