The Unnatural Fuel Buildup Issue

Fuel buildup is a natural process that can become unnatural when certain kinds and amounts of fuel extend uncommonly across landscape. Unnatural fuel buildups occur more readily in short-interval types than in long-interval types and may never occur in some long-interval types. A knowledge of fuel buildup is important in planning how to introduce fire successfully but not in determining the need for it

Muck and Magic: A Resilience Lens on Organic Conversions as Transformation

This is the final version. Available on open access from Taylor & Francis via the DOI in this recordTransformation creates space to consider the profound changes necessary for society to pursue just and sustainable social-ecological systems. Transformation involves profound and complex change, yet there are few empirical studies that analyze transformation across multiple spheres of a social-ecological system. This article aims to address this gap by applying a resilience lens to analyze transformation as a component of UK farmers’ conversions of farmland from conventional to organic status. Transformation is identified as profound shifts in farmer understanding and management of soil fertility. The analysis finds that these transformations involve interplay between changes and scalar processes across political, practical, and personal spheres of transformation. Changes in the political sphere contradictorily drive, enable, and constrain transformation across political, practical, and personal spheres. We conclude that the empirical resilience analysis of transformation across spheres of a social-ecological system generates insights into the critical processes and changes necessary for society to pursue sustainable futures.Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC

*-DCC: A platform to collect, annotate, and explore a large variety of sequencing experiments.

BackgroundOver the past few years the variety of experimental designs and protocols for sequencing experiments increased greatly. To ensure the wide usability of the produced data beyond an individual project, rich and systematic annotation of the underlying experiments is crucial.FindingsWe first developed an annotation structure that captures the overall experimental design as well as the relevant details of the steps from the biological sample to the library preparation, the sequencing procedure, and the sequencing and processed files. Through various design features, such as controlled vocabularies and different field requirements, we ensured a high annotation quality, comparability, and ease of annotation. The structure can be easily adapted to a large variety of species. We then implemented the annotation strategy in a user-hosted web platform with data import, query, and export functionality.ConclusionsWe present here an annotation structure and user-hosted platform for sequencing experiment data, suitable for lab-internal documentation, collaborations, and large-scale annotation efforts

Cutting Posts and Poles for Profit

This publication provides guidance on harvesting timber for posts and poles. It includes suggestions to check with the farm forester for technical assistance, secure a market for the product before cutting, cut the post to the proper length with square-cut ends, and limb smoothly

Pruning Black Hills Pine

Guide to pruning Black Hills pine addresses selecting crop trees, equipment needed for pruning, safety, and government cost-share

Thinning Black Hills Pine

Guide to thinning Black Hills pine trees to eliminate the least productive, low quality trees giving room to remaining trees and increased rate of growth. Discusses are reason not to clear-cut, types of thinning, spacing guides, slash disposal, equipment needed, and government cost-share programs

Cutting Posts and Poles for Profit

Guide to cutting posts and poles for profit discusses thinning a timber stand and how to cut an acceptable product

Yield instability of winter oilseed rape modulated by early winter temperature

Yield stability is a major problem in oilseed rape with inter-annual variation accounting for between 30–50% of the crop value among the major global rapeseed producers. The United Kingdom has persistent problems with yield instability, but the underlying causes remain unclear. We tested whether temperature plays a role in UK winter oilseed rape (WOSR) yield variation through analysis of aggregated country-wide on-farm yield data and in annual Recommended List variety trial data run by the UK Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB). Our analyses of the two independent datasets both show that mean temperature in early winter is strongly and uniquely linked to variation in WOSR yield, with a rise in mean temperature of 1 °C associated with an average reduction of 113 (+−21) kg ha−1 in yield. We propose that understanding the mechanism by which early winter chilling affects WOSR yield will enable the breeding of varieties with a more stable and resilient yield in Western Europe as climatic variation increases