The Role of the Local Community on Federal Lands: The Weaverville Community Forest

In the wake of the timber wars, communities across the American West have struggled to redefine their relationships to nearby federal forests. The timber-dependent model of the pre-Timber War era, with clear timber targets and economic outputs, has been replaced by more nuanced and less clearly-defined model: ecosystem management. This case study research uses interviews with participants in the Weaverville Community Forest (WCF) to explore the role of a community in managing its nearby federal lands. Momentum for the WCF flowed from a small group of citizens who were invested in the forest despite their cultural and ideological differences regarding its appropriate management. The WCF built upon project successes through management on lands identified as unhealthy or dangerous because of wildland fire risk. The WCF and its partners created a scaffolding of support for politically and economically weakened federal agencies to conduct work in the area

Comparative advantages of small-scale forestry among emerging forest tenures

Forestland tenure institutions and patterns are in a period of rapid change in the USA. Historically dominant forestland tenures are disappearing, and new tenures are emerging. Traditional, vertically-integrated forest products firms have shed their forestland holdings to be picked up by Timber Investment Management Organizations (TIMOs) and Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), increasing numbers of private individuals and families are purchasing small rural tracts, and some communities are developing innovative means to gain control over nearby forestlands in order to protect these lands from commercial real estate development. Within this context of rapid ownership change, small-scale forest owners including families and communities find themselves at a competitive disadvantage, relative to large corporate owners, in wood commodity markets. This paper considers how small-scale forest tenures, relative to large corporate tenures, may be advantageous to society with regard to selected ecological, social, and economic factors. While the paper primarily draws upon illustrations from the United States Pacific Northwest, its themes are global in nature

Finding Solutions through Politics: One View from Inside the Timber Wars

There are many perspectives of the timber wars, and one perspective that is not frequently documented is that of government bureaucrats – policy makers, regulators, and others who were often caught in the crossfire of opposing sides. This oral history with Dr. Andrea Tuttle is one attempt to describe the Timber Wars from this perspective. On February 25, 2017, I invited Dr. Tuttle to sit down and discuss her history with forest regulation. I asked very few questions and instead listened as she told the history; I ended up with two hours of audio, which I transcribed to over fifteen pages. The following oral history is edited for brevity and flow

Kansas Fire & Rescue Training Institute Training Methodology: Best Practices for Fire Service Instructors

Kansas Fire & Rescue Training Institute Training Methodology: Best Practices for Fire Service Instructors was developed on February 01, 2021 by Kelly McCoy and Erin McGruder of Kansas Fire & Rescue Training Institute (KFRTI), leveraging the input of KFRTI Program Managers and Program Coordinators. This document will be used for “on-boarding” new and existing contract instructors within KFRTI. The intent of this document is to increase training effectiveness and instructor consistency in delivering fire services training to the State of Kansas’ 14,650 firefighters.Until October 2020, Kansas Fire & Rescue Training Institute (KFRTI) had over 300 contract fire instructors registered within the learning management system. This is a large number of instructors to manage and there is no information available for how effective instructors have been in the field. Using a rubric created by KFRTI, the number of contract instructors has been narrowed to 78. In addition to requiring National Fire Protection Association Instructor I certification, Kansas Fire & Rescue Training Institute designed a foundational training methodology document to be used in “on-boarding” new and existing contract instructors to increase instructor effectiveness and consistency in instructional approach. This methodology, based on best practices in adult learning and firefighting instruction, will help improve fire service instruction across the State of Kansas

Introduction from the Editors

Introduction from the Editor

Ecosystem Service Commodification: lessons from California

In 2013 the state of California launched a cap-and-trade program with a groundbreaking protocol for improved forest management (IFM), providing a framework to monetize carbon sequestration in managed forests. Through in-depth interviews and document review, this research examines California IFM program development as a case study in stakeholder-engaged ecosystem commodification. We consider how diverse, vested-interest actors contested rival program design options by using the familiar narratives of ecological modernization, green governmentality, and civic environmentalism. The results reveal the benefits and complexities of delegating methodological design to stakeholders who seek direct participation in the market, and highlight the challenges of balancing multiple program objectives, including environmental benefits, legitimacy and market reception, and landowner participation potential. This research provides a unique window into the complex process of forest-offset program design and offers broader lessons for ecosystem markets currently being designed and implemented globally.This material is based on work that is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture McIntire-Stennis program, accession number 231837

TEAMwork: Testing Emotional Attunement and Mutuality During Parent-Adolescent fMRI.

The parent-child relationship and family context influence the development of emotion regulation (ER) brain circuitry and related skills in children and adolescents. Although both parents' and children's ER neurocircuitry simultaneously affect how they interact with one another, neuroimaging studies of parent-child relationships typically include only one member of the dyad in brain imaging procedures. The current study examined brain activation related to parenting and ER in parent-adolescent dyads during concurrent fMRI scanning with a novel task - the Testing Emotional Attunement and Mutuality (TEAM) task. The TEAM task includes feedback trials indicating the other dyad member made an error, resulting in a monetary loss for both participants. Results indicate that positive parenting practices as reported by the adolescent were positively correlated with parents' hemodynamic activation of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, a region related to empathy, during these error trials. Additionally, during feedback conditions both parents and adolescents exhibited fMRI activation in ER-related regions, including the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, anterior insula, fusiform gyrus, thalamus, caudate, precuneus, and superior parietal lobule. Adolescents had higher left amygdala activation than parents during the feedback condition. These findings demonstrate the utility of dyadic fMRI scanning for investigating relational processes, particularly in the parent-child relationship

Salinity and temperature affect the symbiont profile and host condition of Florida USA blue crabs Callinectes sapidus

Subtropical Florida blue crabs, Callinectes sapidus, exhibit differing life history traits compared to their temperate counterparts, likely influencing symbiont infection dynamics. Little information exists for Florida C. sapidus symbiont profiles, their distribution among various habitats, and influence on crab condition. Using histopathology, genomics, and transmission electron microscopy, we describe the first symbiont profiles for Florida C. sapidus occupying freshwater to marine habitats. Twelve symbiont groups were identified from 409 crabs including ciliophorans, digenean, microsporidian, Haplosporidia, Hematodinium sp., Nematoda, filamentous bacteria, gregarine, Callinectes sapidus nudivirus, Octolasmis sp., Cambarincola sp., and putative microcell. Overall, 78% of C. sapidus were documented with one or more symbiont groups demonstrating high infection rates in wild populations. Environmental variables water temperature and salinity explained 48% of the variation in symbiont groups among Florida habitats, and salinity was positively correlated with C. sapidus symbiont diversity. This suggests freshwater C. sapidus possess fewer symbionts and represent healthier individuals compared to saltwater populations. Crab condition was examined using the reflex action mortality predictor (RAMP) to determine if reflex impairment could be linked to symbiont prevalence. Symbionts were found positively correlated with crab condition, and impaired crabs were more likely to host symbionts, demonstrating symbiont inclusion may boost predictive ability of the RAMP application. The microsporidian symbiont group had a particularly strong effect on C. sapidus reflex response, and impairment was on average 1.57 times higher compared to all other symbiont groups. Our findings demonstrate the importance of considering full symbiont profiles and their associations with a spatially and temporally variable environment to fully assess C. sapidus population health.</p

Always on my mind: Cross-brain associations of mental health symptoms during simultaneous parent-child scanning.

How parents manifest symptoms of anxiety or depression may affect how children learn to modulate their own distress, thereby influencing the children's risk for developing an anxiety or mood disorder. Conversely, children's mental health symptoms may impact parents' experiences of negative emotions. Therefore, mental health symptoms can have bidirectional effects in parent-child relationships, particularly during moments of distress or frustration (e.g., when a parent or child makes a costly mistake). The present study used simultaneous functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of parent-adolescent dyads to examine how brain activity when responding to each other's costly errors (i.e., dyadic error processing) may be associated with symptoms of anxiety and depression. While undergoing simultaneous fMRI scans, healthy dyads completed a task involving feigned errors that indicated their family member made a costly mistake. Inter-brain, random-effects multivariate modeling revealed that parents who exhibited decreased medial prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulate cortex activation when viewing their child's costly error response had children with more symptoms of depression and anxiety. Adolescents with increased anterior insula activation when viewing a costly error made by their parent had more anxious parents. These results reveal cross-brain associations between mental health symptomatology and brain activity during parent-child dyadic error processing