Projects in forestry and civil engineering depend on accurate information, which is often acquired through remote sensing techniques. One of the remote sensing technologies that has gained importance in the last decade is light detection and ranging (lidar), which describes the surveyed area with 3D points, presented as point clouds....
Mountain pine beetles (MPB) have killed millions of acres of forest throughout the Rocky Mountain ecoregion in the United States and Canada and climate change may be intensifying outbreaks. Climate change can change forest ecosystems and dynamics by increasing drought conditions and intensifying heat waves. Due to changing climate conditions,...
Invasive plants have the capacity to transform landscapes and alter ecosystem function, causing significant economic and ecological damage. These effects include displacement and reduction of native flora and fauna, altered fire regimes, modification of biotic and abiotic soil properties, as well as local, regional, and global economic impacts. With such...
Total US lumber production in 2011 was 77.9 million cubic meters. Its primary use was for housing and construction. There is a growing concern that the structural properties for wood are being reduced as trees are harvested at much younger ages as the wood supply shifts from older to younger...
Lodgepole pine (Pinus conorta) is a widely distributed forest type across western North America. Central Oregon lodgepole pine forests are ecologically unique when compared to other lodgepole pine ecosystems. Sierra lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta ssp. murrayana) is the dominant variety and often exists as the climax species on pumice soils,...
Forest composition in Paraguay has been in a state of change for the past half century due to land management practices, forest fragmentation, and deforestation for agriculture. How these factors affect dendrological diversity and wood anatomy in Paraguay is not well understood. This thesis documents Paraguayan forest composition on the...
While primary use of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) is positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT), various GNSS applications have emerged over the past decades that includes GNSS meteorology. GNSS meteorology is the remote sensing of the atmospheric constituents in the neutral atmosphere – mostly in the troposphere - using GNSS...
Fire exclusion in the western U.S.A. has caused fuel loads to build up and overall forest health to decline. Managers are now looking for ways to reduce these fuel loads while reintroducing some of the desired effects of natural wildfire. One method to do this is thinning using mechanical harvesting...