What Influences Whether Family Forest Owners Participate in Outreach Campaigns?

We used an experimental design to analyze factors affecting participation rates for family forest owner outreach campaigns. Through logistic regression, we assessed the participation rates as a function of campaign and landowner attributes. Participation rates ranged from 3% to 14%. Owners offered a publication were on average 4.3 times more likely to participate than those offered a forester visit. Owners with a college degree were on average 1.5 times more likely to participate than those with lower levels of formal education. Extension and other outreach professionals can use knowledge of these factors to design more effective outreach campaigns

Black Family Forest Owners in the Southeastern United States: A Case Study in Six Counties

The USDA Forest Service, National Woodland Owner Survey asks family forest owners (FFOs) about their attitudes and intentions regarding their forestland. Historically, the number of responses from Black or African American FFOs has been very low, but it is uncertain whether this is because of nonresponse bias or that there are relatively few Black FFOs. To get a better understanding of these FFOs and to test a method to increase response rates, an intensified survey effort was conducted in three southern states: Alabama, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Analyses indicate that Black FFOs have slightly different objectives, activities, and ownership structure for their forestland than their White counterparts, who have traditionally represented the majority of FFOs. Study Implications: By conducting an experiment to increase response rates from Black family forest owners to the National Woodland Owner Survey, we find traditional methodology is not effective. More importantly, we see this group has moderately different responses than their White counterparts. This has wide ranging implications for landowner assistance programs and other initiatives that have been designed on the premise that we are accurately capturing responses from all woodland owners

Influence of Community Characteristics on Urban Forest Management Programs in New York State

US state and federal urban forest management agencies endeavor to support municipal forestry programs. However, the variation in programs within and among states may complicate support delivery. Municipal programs are often categorized by population size and community affluence to identify common characteristics and needs and facilitate support. To describe local urban forest management programs in New York State, a survey of municipalities gathered information on urban forest management program components, intentions, and needs. In addition to examining the contributions of population size and affluence, this study also evaluated the influence of metropolitan areas on programs in small municipalities and compared all community categorizations using national program standards. The survey revealed that a high percentage of municipalities plant and maintain trees. Nearly half of municipalities have tree inventories and street tree advisory boards, and a low percentage have an urban forest management plan. Almost all reported needing technical and educational assistance. Larger communities were more likely to have a comprehensive urban forest management program than medium-sized communities, and medium communities were more likely than small communities. Communities with high median household income (MHI) were more likely to have comprehensive urban forestry management programs than less affluent communities. However, low MHI and middle MHI communities had equivalent programs. Small municipalities in counties with large metropolitan areas possessed attributes similar to larger municipalities, compared to small communities in counties without these areas. This may indicate that proximity to a large metropolis has the potential to provide a small community with additional resources. These results suggest that smaller and less affluent communities, especially those outside counties containing large metropolitan areas, need more urban forest management assistance than larger and more affluent communities. However, all survey respondents indicated the need for support

Small-Area Estimation for the USDA Forest Service, National Woodland Owner Survey: Creating a Fine-Scale Land Cover and Ownership Layer to Support County-Level Population Estimates

Small area estimation is a powerful modeling technique in which ancillary data can be utilized to “borrow” additional information, effectively increasing sample sizes in small spatial, temporal, or categorical domains. Though more commonly applied to biophysical variables within the study of forest inventory analyses, small area estimation can also be implemented in the context of understanding social values, behaviors, and trends among types of forest landowners within small domains. Here, we demonstrate a method for deriving a continuous fine-scale land cover and ownership layer for the state of Delaware, United States, and an application of that ancillary layer to facilitate small-area estimation of several variables from the USDA Forest Service’s National Woodland Owner Survey. Utilizing a proprietary parcel layer alongside the National Land Cover Database, we constructed a continuous layer with 10-meter resolution depicting land cover and land ownership classes. We found that the National Woodland Owner Survey state-level estimations of total acreage and total ownerships by ownership class were generally within one standard error of the population values calculated from the raster layer, which supported the direct calculation of several population-level summary variables at the county levels. Subsequently, we compare design-based and model-based methods of predicting commercial harvesting by family forest ownerships in Delaware in which forest ownership acreage, taken from the parcel map, was utilized to inform the model-based approach. Results show general agreement between the two modes, indicating that a small area estimation approach can be utilized successfully in this context and shows promise for other variables, especially if additional variables, e.g., United States Census Bureau data, are also incorporated

Assessing New England Family Forest Owners\u27 Invasive Insect Awareness

Family forest owners in the United States have underscored the need for forest insect pest (FIP) information, and numerous Extension programs have been developed to meet pest information needs. We developed the Pest Awareness Index to illustrate the heterogeneity of familiarity, knowledge, and experience regarding three FIPs (hemlock woolly adelgid, emerald ash borer, Asian long-horned beetle) in four New England states. Using mail survey data of family forest owners, we calculated an index from three components and provided comparisons based on region and actual insect presence. The differences in the index across these domains have implications for measurement and delivery of Extension programs

Sources of Nonnative Centrarchids in the Upper Colorado River Revealed by Stable Isotope and Microchemical Analyses of Otoliths

Nonnative fishes represent a significant impediment to the recovery of imperiled fishes, including those endemic to the Colorado River in the southwestern United States. Efforts to control nonindigenous fish abundance in the upper Colorado River basin have been unsuccessful owing in part to lack of knowledge regarding nonnative fish recruitment sources. We determined the source habitat (floodplain pond versus riverine habitats) for nonnative centrarchid fishes (largemouth bass Micropterus salmoides, green sunfish Lepomis cyanellus, bluegill L. macrochirus, and black crappie Pomoxis nigromaculatus) in the upper Colorado River using stable hydrogen isotopic composition (δD) and strontium:calcium (Sr:Ca) ratios in fish otoliths as natural markers of environmental history. Stable hydrogen isotope analysis revealed that 59% of centrarchids exhibited the otolith core signatures expected for riverine-origin fish, while 22% had emigrated from floodplain ponds and 19% were of uncertain origin. Strontium:calcium ratio data were consistent with the δD assays and indicated that relatively few fish immigrated to the river from high-salinity habitats. Black crappie was the only species that originated primarily from floodplain ponds. Efforts to control the abundance of most of the fishes included in this study should be concentrated in riverine habitats given the hydrologic conditions (below-average river discharge) present during our study. However, the proportion of pond-origin fish increased with fish age, which, coupled with historical river discharge data, suggested that floodplain pond contributions to riverine nonnative fish populations fluctuate with the interannual variations in flow regime and river–pond connectivity. Our results are the first to demonstrate the utility of δD as a natural marker of fish environmental history that will probably provide valuable insights into the management of fish in other environments

Five anthropogenic factors that will radically alter forest conditions and management needs in the Northern United States

The Northern United States includes the 20 states bounded by Maine, Maryland, Missouri, and Minnesota. With 70 million ha of forestland and 124 million people, it is the most densely forested (42% of land area) and most densely populated (74 people/km2) quadrant of the United States. Three recent, large-scale, multiresource assessments of forest conditions provide insight about trends and issues in the North, and collectively these and other supporting documents highlight factors that will be extraordinarily influential in large-scale northern forest management needs over the next 50 years. This review article discusses five of those factors: (1) northern forests lack age-class diversity and will uniformly grow old without management interventions or natural disturbances, (2) the area of forestland in the North will decrease as a consequence of expanding urban areas, (3) invasive species will alter forest density, diversity, and function, (4) management intensity for timber is low in northern forests and likely to remain so, and (5) management for nontimber objectives will gain relevance but will be challenging to implement. Suggested actions to address these factors include the following: develop quantifiable state and regional goals for forest diversity, understand the spatial and structural impacts of urban expansion on forests, develop symbiotic relationships among forest owners, forest managers, forest industry and the other stakeholders to support contemporary conservation goals, and work to understand the many dimensions of forest change. In the next several decades, climate change seems unlikely to overwhelm or negate any of the five factors discussed in this article; rather it will add another complicating dimension.Natural Resource Ecology and Managemen

Standalone vertex finding in the ATLAS muon spectrometer

A dedicated reconstruction algorithm to find decay vertices in the ATLAS muon spectrometer is presented. The algorithm searches the region just upstream of or inside the muon spectrometer volume for multi-particle vertices that originate from the decay of particles with long decay paths. The performance of the algorithm is evaluated using both a sample of simulated Higgs boson events, in which the Higgs boson decays to long-lived neutral particles that in turn decay to bbar b final states, and pp collision data at √s = 7 TeV collected with the ATLAS detector at the LHC during 2011

Measurements of Higgs boson production and couplings in diboson final states with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

Measurements are presented of production properties and couplings of the recently discovered Higgs boson using the decays into boson pairs, H →γ γ, H → Z Z∗ →4l and H →W W∗ →lνlν. The results are based on the complete pp collision data sample recorded by the ATLAS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider at centre-of-mass energies of √s = 7 TeV and √s = 8 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of about 25 fb−1. Evidence for Higgs boson production through vector-boson fusion is reported. Results of combined fits probing Higgs boson couplings to fermions and bosons, as well as anomalous contributions to loop-induced production and decay modes, are presented. All measurements are consistent with expectations for the Standard Model Higgs boson

Measurement of the top quark-pair production cross section with ATLAS in pp collisions at \sqrt{s}=7\TeV

A measurement of the production cross-section for top quark pairs(\ttbar) in $pp$ collisions at \sqrt{s}=7 \TeV is presented using data recorded with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. Events are selected in two different topologies: single lepton (electron $e$ or muon $\mu$) with large missing transverse energy and at least four jets, and dilepton ($ee$, $\mu\mu$ or $e\mu$) with large missing transverse energy and at least two jets. In a data sample of 2.9 pb-1, 37 candidate events are observed in the single-lepton topology and 9 events in the dilepton topology. The corresponding expected backgrounds from non-\ttbar Standard Model processes are estimated using data-driven methods and determined to be $12.2 \pm 3.9$ events and $2.5 \pm 0.6$ events, respectively. The kinematic properties of the selected events are consistent with SM \ttbar production. The inclusive top quark pair production cross-section is measured to be \sigmattbar=145 \pm 31 ^{+42}_{-27} pb where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second systematic. The measurement agrees with perturbative QCD calculations.Comment: 30 pages plus author list (50 pages total), 9 figures, 11 tables, CERN-PH number and final journal adde