Mitigation strategies for reducing CO2 emissions include substitution of fossil fuel with bioenergy from forests, where carbon emitted is expected to be re-captured in the growth of new biomass to achieve zero net emissions, and forest thinning to reduce wildfire emissions. Here we use forest inventory data to show that...
Mitigation strategies for reducing CO2 emissions include substitution of fossil fuel with bioenergy from forests, where carbon emitted is expected to be re-captured in the growth of new biomass to achieve zero net emissions, and forest thinning to reduce wildfire emissions. Here we use forest inventory data to show that...
Full Text:
.
Title: Regional CO2 implicationsofforestbioenergyproduction
Authors: Tara W. Hudiburg*1, Beverly
Oregon has been moving forward with biomass energy development. Large-scale biomass power and cogeneration (producing heat and electricity) have been the focus of the last twenty-five years, while small-scale thermal bioenergy installations (producing heat) have dramatically increased during the last decade. In eastern Oregon, bioenergy is closely linked to restoration...
Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have been steadily increasing from anthropogenic energy production, development and use. Carbon cycling in the terrestrial biosphere, particularly forest ecosystems, has an important role in regulating atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide. US West coast forest management policies are being developed to implement forest bioenergy production while...
Bioenergy is a rapidly growing subsector of the emerging global bioeconomy, with the potential to create a substantial number of jobs and mitigate climate change. In order to develop bioenergy into a viable industry, capable of providing valuable energy and employment, there is an immediate need for a skilled workforce...
Designing A Citizen Involvement Program presents a model and supportive materials that can be used to design and implement a program for involving citizens in decision-making that concerns significant environmental issues. These actions might be large-scale construction projects, such as building a dam, an electric power plant, or a nuclear...
Changes in the global climate and forest management practices have given rise to increasing numbers and severity of wildfires. More than five million acres burned in the United States in 2017, while in Canada 7.4 million acres burned. In particular, an increasing amount of dead woody biomass is a key...
A broad definition of forestry would be the study of trees, forests, and their use by people. Modern science-based forestry is thought to have begun in the nineteenth century when Europeans looked to specialists to address questions of wood supply and extraction both in their forests at home and in...
...........................................................................................70
Survey of Insect Pests in Kentucky Bluegrass Seed Production in Central Oregon, 2005
Xylem is nonuniform in its structure and function throughout the plant stem. Xylem structure varies from pith to bark, from root to apical meristem, from stem to branch, at nodes vs internodes, and at junctions of branches, stems or roots compared to the internodal regions nearby. At smaller scales, anatomy...
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...
...........................................................................................................7
Comparison of Urea with Polymer Coated Urea in Perennial Ryegrass Seed Production
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...
Tree biomass is typically estimated using statistical models. This review highlights five limitations of most tree biomass models, which include the following: (1) biomass data are costly to collect and alternative sampling methods are used; (2) belowground data and models are generally lacking; (3) models are often developed from small...
In this study an improved model of biomass and nutrient estimation of coastal Douglas-fir (Psuedotsuga menziesii) in the Pacific Northwest has been developed across a wide range of stand management regimes. This study quantifies and defines the type and intensity of biomass harvest and associated removal for actively managed stands...
The Tertiary geologic evolution of the Oregon and Washington continental margin was molded by episodic periods of convergence between the Pacific oceanic plates and the North American plate. This margin is the site of a deep basin that is floored by Paleocene to lower Eocene oceanic crust and contains more...
Policymakers are examining a wide range of alternatives for climate change mitigation, including carbon offset sales programs, to enhance sequestration in the forest sector. Under an offset sales program, on-the-ground forestry could change as a result of both afforestation and modifications in the management of existing forests. These effects could...
Riparian ecosystems support mosaics of terrestrial and aquatic plant species that enhance regional biodiversity and provide important ecosystem services to humans. Species composition and the distribution of functional traits - traits that define species in terms of their ecological roles - within riparian plant communities are rapidly changing in response...
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...
Collaborative management of subsistence fisheries in the Philippines requires policies that devolve authority to the local level. This involves creating mechanisms to hold managers accountable for creating opportunities for active participation by fisher folk communities. The Philippines has created a comprehensive national framework for the co-management of coastal resources at...
This study quantifies how leakage behavior from afforesting agricultural land affects the intensification of agricultural production. In particular, we examine the leakage percentage from carbon offset allowance at specific southern regions in the United States as a part of a carbon market. We use the Forest and Agriculture Sector Optimization...
Knowledge of regional-scale patterns of plant community structure and controlling factors is largely qualitative and based on numerous local studies. Data from a subsample of 10,000 field plots were used to quantify and map compositional gradients of woody plant communities across Oregon forests. Canonical correspondence analyses explained 9-14% of the...
Fire, other disturbances, physical setting, weather, and climate shape the structure and function of forests throughout the Western United States. More than 80 years of fire research have shown that physical setting, fuels, and weather combine to determine wildfire intensity (the rate at which it consumes fuel) and severity (the...
Published January 1946. Facts and recommendations in this publication may no longer be valid. Please look for up-to-date information in the OSU Extension Catalog: http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog
At global and regional scales, tree mortality rates are positively correlated with forest net primary productivity (NPP). Yet causes of the correlation are unknown, in spite of potentially profound implications for our understanding of environmental controls of forest structure and dynamics and, more generally, our understanding of broad-scale environmental controls...
Due to public and regulatory restrictions, genetic containment technology is critical for research and development of transgenic trees in forestry. A multi-year field trial demonstrated that the RNAi-LFY construct successfully induces sexual sterility in 6K10 poplar (Populus alba) without visible effects on vegetative development. However, its limited number of replicates...
The history of forest change processes is written into forest age and distribution and affects earth systems at many scales. No one data set has been able to capture the full forest disturbance and land use record through time, so in this study, we combined multiple lines of evidence to...
Recently released national forest plans and conservation plans for the protection of the northern spotted owl all call for a change in management direction on public forest lands in Oregon. The result will be a substantial reduction in public timber harvests in the state. This report summarizes how the conservation...
Based on regional-scale studies, aboveground production and litter decomposition are thought to positively covary, because they are driven by shared biotic and climatic factors. Until now we have been unable to test whether production and decomposition are generally coupled across climatically dissimilar regions, because we lacked replicated data collected within...
Production of renewable energy from biomass has been promoted as means to improve greenhouse gas balance in energy production, improve energy security, and provide jobs and income. However, uncertainties remain as to how the agriculture and forest sectors might jointly respond to increased demand for bioelectricity feedstocks and the potential...
There are four sources of biomass fuels for generating electricity in southwest Oregon: noncommercial hardwoods, logging residues, mill residues, and municipal solid wastes. Noncommercial hardwoods and logging residues exist in sufficient quantities to support 100 MWe of generating capacity for 20 years. Logging residues are costly to harvest and would...
Despite its promise as a potentially beneficial new source of energy, the ocean-based renewable energy industry is still in its infancy, and like any new idea there are many unknowns with the potential to affect both people and our natural environments. A permit for marine renewable energy (MRE) must cut...
John Archibald Wheeler (09 July 1911- ) is a familiar name to physicists and historians of physics alike. Among his many contributions to the corpus of knowledge, in 1939 John Wheeler and Niels Bohr co-authored the first paper on the generalized mechanism of nuclear fission. Beyond that seminal work, Wheeler...
The scientific endeavors that took place at Hanford Engineer Works, beginning in World War II and continuing thereafter, are often overlooked in the literature on the Manhattan Project, the Atomic Energy Commission, and in regional histories. To historians of science, Hanford is described as an industrial facility that illustrates the...
The "old-growth controversy" in the Pacific Northwest recognized thinning as the
primary silvicultural practice for land managers to produce wildlife habitat while
continuing to produce timber. For the foreseeable future, forest stands will be harvested to
produce forest gaps and a patchwork of trees of different ages. In order to...
As a result of a warming climate, subsequent declining snowpack, and a century of fire suppression, forest fires are increasing across the western United States. However, we still do not fully understand how forest fire effects snowpack energy balance, nor the volume and availability of snow melt and associated water...
American meteorology was synonymous with subjective weather forecasting in the early twentieth century. Controlled by the Weather Bureau and with no academic programs of its own, the few hundred extant meteorologists had no standing in the scientific community. Until the American Meteorological Society was founded in 1919, meteorologists had no...
Rising atmospheric [CO₂], cₐ, is expected to affect stomatal regulation of leaf gas-exchange of woody plants, thus influencing energy fluxes as well as carbon (C), water, and nutrient cycling of forests. Researchers have proposed various strategies for stomatal regulation of leaf gas-exchange that include maintaining a constant leaf internal [CO₂],...
Environmental scientists, land managers, and policy actors are increasingly presented with high-stakes high-uncertainty problems stemming from human-ecosystem interactions. To help address these problems, scientists frequently use models that produce enormous geospatial and temporal datasets that are constantly modified and often seek input from communities outside their discipline. To assist scientists—as...
The public controversy over possible health hazards from radioactive fallout from atomic bomb testing began in 1954, shortly after a thermonuclear test by the United States spread fallout world wide. In the dissertation, I address two of the fundamental questions of the fallout controversy: Was there a threshold of radiation...
Forests in the Blue Mountains region of eastern Oregon and Washington are facing a large-scale forest health crisis. Poor forest conditions have greatly increased the risk of catastrophic wildfire. Resource managers in the Wallowa-Whitman, Umatilla, and Malheur National Forests are utilizing prescribed fire and mechanized thinning treatments to reduce hazardous...
Two strategic approaches to water quality control in Oregon's
Willamette River are presently being utilized: point source treatment
and flow augmentation. Dry weather releases from reservoirs are for
authorized purposes other than water quality. Reservoirs can participate
in pollution control by summer flow augmentation where authorized water
resource objectives (flood...
History is an invaluable source of information to understand and evaluate management influences on contemporary ecosystems and landscapes. The first two chapters (Chapters 2 and 3) explored the concept of historical range of variability (HRV) in landscape structure and stand structure using a stochastic fire simulation model to simulate presettlement...
Studies of the effects of climate change on forests have focused on the ability of species to tolerate temperature and moisture changes and to disperse, but they have ignored the effects of disturbances caused by climate change (e.g., Ojima et al. 1991). Yet modeling studies indicate the importance of climate...
The atomic age was enacted by many scientists as a way to realize health and human rights. Human rights were conceived in this context as rights to economic development, science education, and nuclear medicine. The United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) acted hand in hand with UN agencies and educators...
The use of fossil fuels and their related impact on the environment and global warming have encouraged societies to pursue more sustainable and renewable alternatives, e.g., forest-based bio-oil. Thus, a vital need to decrease the level of greenhouse gas emissions and the tendency of nations to reduce their dependency on...
Growing awareness and concern within society over the use of and reliance on fossil fuels has stimulated research efforts in identifying, developing, and selecting alternative energy sources and energy technologies. Bioenergy represents a promising replacement for conventional energy, due to reduced environmental impacts and broad applicability. Sustainable energy challenges, however,...
Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) forest residues were physically fractionated through sieving. The bark and wood were separated for large-sized fractions (>12.7 mm), and their contents were determined. The chemical compositions of the large fractions were calculated based on the contents and chemical compositions of the bark and wood. The chemical compositions...
Human activities are causing profound changes to the global environment, yet the potential consequences of these changes on rising atmospheric carbon dioxide and climate change are not well understood. Improving our understanding of these processes requires an enhanced awareness of how global ecosystems are changing and how these changes affect...
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...
A firm's productivity is composed of two parts: pure technical change and location-specific (agglomeration) externalities. Regional productivity is thus an aggregation of productivity of firms producing similar goods and located in a given region. International trade can affect both components of regional productivity. First, trade openness in a closed economy...
Understanding the impact of humans on the environment has long been a topic of scholarly interest and debate. As environmental problems mount, accounts of historic ecological conditions and the factors of change become increasingly useful. This study considers competing schools of interpretation about human impacts on ecological landscapes and develops...
By means of a case study and historical analysis, this dissertation examines the past and present of avian influenza. By integrating disconnected histories of human and animal influenza, this dissertation links historical insights with the concerns of contemporary avian flu science. It is not only a natural history of avian...
This thesis will address the transformation of biological sciences during the 1930s and 1940s and it effects on fisheries science. It will focus on Oregon State College and specifically the Department of Fish and Game Management and the interaction with the Oregon Game Commission. Support for mutation theory and neo-...
While historiography and interest in Tudor England at both the popular and specialist levels presents few signs of diminishing, there may nonetheless exist a sense that we have little left to learn about this period and its culture. A notable gap in our knowledge, however, remains regarding the mysterious disease...
In 1959 the British Ornithological journal, The Ibis, published a centenary commemorative volume on the history of ornithology in Britain. Over the previous few decades, the contributors to this volume had helped focus the attention of ornithologists on the methods, priorities, and problems of modem biology, specifically the theory ofevolution...
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...
By 1900 domestication was a promising, if somewhat vexed, subject in biology. Volumes had been written about domestication, but little serious scientific inquiry was directed toward the phenomenon. Expertise lay with practical men, primarily breeders and fanciers. The bulk of scientific commentary on domestication came from anthropologists who derived theories...
This dissertation focuses on the life of Dixy Lee Ray as it examines important developments in marine biology and biological oceanography during the mid twentieth century. In addition, Ray's key involvement in the public understanding of science movement of the 1950s and 1960s provides a larger social and cultural context...
This dissertation explores the structural dynamics of human understanding and particularly the concept of meaning and its connections to concepts of ultimate ground, necessity and contingency, language, and perception. It focuses on the history of the concept of meaning in early twentieth-century European physics and philosophy, through an analysis of...
The education (particularly graduate education) of Americans
who were active in astronomical research between 1876 and 1941
is assessed for its effectiveness in preparing the astronomers for
careers in research. This period contains three dynamic changes:
the growth of American astronomy in becoming the world's leading
community of astronomers, the...
.................................................................. 592
PRODUCTION RATE OF ASTRONOMY PHDS ......................................... 597
TABLE OF
Beginning in the late-nineteenth century, several dialogues emerged concerning life on Mars. Some supported the notion of an inhabited Mars, citing recent observations of the planet, while others, pointing to a lack of concrete evidence, denied the validity of such a bold hypothesis. The dialogues within and between different...
L. C. Dunn (1893-1974) spent most of his scientific career conducting research in
developmental genetics as a member of the Zoology Department at Columbia
University in the City of New York. He had an accomplished scientific career
researching mutations in mice, which earned him respect from other geneticists and
scientists....
Two manuscripts are presented, each examining the potential impacts of emerging technologies on the economic feasibility of fuels reduction treatments on federal forest lands. Both manuscripts were prepared as part of the larger effort funded by the Institute for Working Forest Landscapes under the “Opportunities for biochar production to reduce...
Radiocarbon is an exceptionally useful tool for studying soil-respired CO₂, providing information about soil
carbon turnover rates, depths of production, and the biological sources of production through partitioning. Unfortunately, little
work has been done to thoroughly investigate the possibility of inherent biases present in current measurement techniques,
like those present...
Many important policy problems entail linkages among multiple economic sectors, and require the use of a general equilibrium economic modeling framework. This economic approach is appropriate when the market for any one good or service is linked to numerous other goods and services, and back to fundamental inputs such as...
This publication is part of a 1-year project funded by the Oregon Department of Agriculture, Alternatives to Field Burning Program. Crop substitution is one strategy for reducing smoke from field burning. The objective of the project was to evaluate the potential for hybrid poplar as an alternative crop for poorly...
Bale Mountains National Park (BMNP) is currently considered the most important conservation area in Ethiopia. BMNP was established over forty years ago to protect Ethiopian endemic fauna and to preserve an array of habitat types including Afroalpine, Afromontane, and the second largest natural humid forest (Harenna forest) left in Ethiopia....
Climate Change in the Northwest: Implications for Our Landscapes, Waters, and Communities is a report aimed at assessing the state of knowledge about key climate impacts and consequences to various sectors and communities in the Northwest United States. This report draws on two recent state climate assessments in Washington in...
Growing demand for bioenergy, biofuels, and bioproducts has increased interests in the utilization of biomass residues from forest treatments as feedstock. In areas with limited history of industrial biomass utilization, uncertainties in the quantity, distribution, and cost of biomass production and logistics can hinder the development of new bio-based industries....
The purpose of this research study is to investigate and gain understanding of the factors contributing to development of the Center for Advanced Learning (CAL), a regional collaborative educational reform project and the partnerships that emerged from that process. The development process and partnerships are examined from a systems thinking...
Informed conservation of small mammals, ecosystems, and predators requires a detailed understanding of how small mammals species and communities vary in both space and time, as well as the relative cyclicity and synchrony of this variation. This variation can be especially informative to land managers interested in manipulating the abundance...
For centuries in what is now southern Kenya and northern Tanzania, nomadic, Maasai livestock herders have coexisted with vast populations of wildlife. Today, both wildlife and the Maasai herding lifestyle, a vital component of Maasai culture, are threatened by changes to the landscape and losses in mobility, including the policy...
Associations between occupancy patterns of a montane anuran species, Rana cascadae, and habitat structure at multiple scales were examined to investigate how population structure may influence persistence in spatially and temporally heterogeneous environments. Predictions were based on population dynamics suggested by source-sink and metapopulation models. Potential sites in three basins...
Using qualitative research methods we examined how group ranch privatization and settlement of individual Maasai households across the landscape have affected traditional livestock herding and social capital mechanisms of Maasai livestock herders. This process has altered decision-making processes, social networks, and cooperation of Maasai herders and limited access to water...
The overall objective of this study is to propose a framework or model for
comprehensive management model of coastal development in Quintana Roo (Quintana
Roo's Coastal Management Program-QRCMP), using a regional approach.
Mining impacts on stream systems have historically been studied over small spatial scales, yet
investigations over large areas may be useful for characterizing mining as a regional source of stress to
stream fishes. The associations between co-occurring stream fish assemblages and densities of various
“classes” of mining occurring in the...
This dissertation presents the results of three studies that assessed climate variability on short and long timescales in western United States. The growth of carbonate formations in caves (speleothems) is used to infer the timing and amplitude of past climate variability. We first assess the controls on speleothem growth for...
In this thesis, I investigate the organization of eelgrass (Zostera marina L.) and mesograzer communities across local and regional scales in three upwelling- influenced estuaries located along the Oregon coast, USA. Eelgrass ecosystems are an important source of primary production in estuarine systems, providing numerous ecosystem services, including nursery habitat...