Renewable energy technology continues to grow in popularity as countries aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Land based and offshore wind turbines are one option for expanding renewable energy sources. However, as wind energy adoption increases, so does the need for enhanced monitoring of wind turbines’ potential effect on local...
The release of marine debris into the oceans and seas is a global issue of growing concern. These materials are harmful to marine environments and can also transport non-native species to novel habitats. Non-native species floating on marine litter is one of the lesser known impacts associated with marine debris....
Advancing the understanding of natural resource management is an important step in mitigating the effects of human activity on the environment, and ensuring efficient outcomes for many sectors of the economy. As humanity’s role in the natural world becomes better understood, the importance of interdisciplinary modeling has grown in leaps...
The Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management propose to adopt coordinated ecosystem management direction for the lands they administer within the range of the northern spotted owl. This Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SETS) presents as alternatives the options, with slight modifications, developed by the Forest Ecosystem Management Assessment...
As the demands for forest products increase, additional timber harvesting operations can be expected on steep mountainous terrain, The resulting disruption of natural slope stability by man's disturbances (roadbuilding, logging and vegetative manipulation, etc.) may also accelerate mass movement processes in this terrain. Swanston (1969) defines mass movement as ".,...
Some results of a study conducted in the Sierra Nevada
Mountains west of Lake Tahoe are reported. The study measured
soil impacts resulting from the use of a Caterpillar Tractor
model D6D, a John Deere wheeled skidder model JD-640, and an FMC
Corporation model FMC 21OCA logging vehicle. The three...
The use of mechanized harvest equipment has been
increasing as an economical method to harvest small diameter
timber. While the use of this equipment is increasing,
little is known about associated soil compaction. In
particular, little information exists on soil compaction
caused by feller--bunchers.
This study measured soil compaction caused...
The purpose of this study was to determine the significant
variables influencing the damage levels sustained by the residual
stand after skyline thinning of coniferous stands. Damage levels were
measured in ten study areas in western Oregon that had received their
first commercial thinning.
For this post-logging study, 38 units...
Western hemlock and Sitka spruce are relatively thin-
barked species and susceptible to damage during thinning
operations. Damage to the wood allows decay-causing fungi
to enter resulting in loss of merchantable volume at the
time of final harvest. Cable yarding systems are needed for
much of the thinning because most...
Shovel logging is a relatively new ground-based method of yarding tinther. It involves moving logs from stump to landing by successive swinging with a hydraulic excavator modified into a log loader by replacing the shovel bucket with a grapple. Loaders used in shovel yarding can weigh in excess of 100,000...
Public attention and concern about per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) are increasing due to detection of PFASs in drinking water supplies, the environment, including remote locations, and wildlife and to the lowering of the federal health advisory levels of perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoate (PFOA) in drinking water. Aqueous film-forming...
There are many links between exposure to environmental pollution and risks to human health. While advances in the fields of toxicology, exposure science, and environmental chemistry have shown light on many of these links, many more research challenges remain. One major challenge is how to accurately characterize the toxicity of...
Large quantities of the chemical oil dispersant Corexit were applied in the Gulf of Mexico (Gulf) in response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Large data gaps regarding the potential transport, persistence and impact of Corexit in the Gulf existed at the time of the emergency response. Analytical methods for...
In the study of rebuilding and recovery after natural disasters in the United States, little attention is paid to understanding how and why people rebuild following recurring, small-scale events, like wildfire. Hazard and risk literature, instead, is focused on understanding how larger communities with greater resources, economics, and social capital,...
Sediment cores were retrieved from a landslide-dammed lake, recording events back to the 5th century AD in a forested, mountainous catchment. These cores provide an opportunity to compare the impacts of known recent perturbations, including floods and timber harvesting with those of the early period of the core, flood, fire,...
Climate change increases weather unpredictability, threatens communities whose livelihoods depend on natural resources, such as rural communities. Utilizing a Community Capital Framework (Flora and Flora, 2013) and Governance of Complex Adaptive Systems (Duit and Galaz, 2008), this study concentrated on the role of cultural and political capital in supporting rural...
Non-target effects are one of the greatest potential risks of weed biological control programs, and understanding non-target effects of biological control at the population level is crucial for predicting when they will occur and altering the perception of biological control as a whole. In this thesis, we assessed the ecological...
Experiments were conducted to determine survival, growth, and accumulation of HEOD (major component of dieldrin) in the tissues of steelhead trout (Salmo gairdneri) embryos, alevins, and fry exposed to dieldrin concentrations ranging from 0.012 to 52 ppb. The fish were held in specially designed exposure chambers provided with continuously renewed...