The Role of the West Virginia Extension Service in Forestry Education and Technical Assistance

We conducted a survey of county-based West Virginia University Extension Service personnel to clarify the contribution of the organization to forestry outreach education in the state. Questionnaires were mailed to 235 Extension personnel, and 76% responded. Despite few with advanced forestry training, 65% receive forestry-related questions, and 72% of those answer an average of 24% of the questions. The proportion of forestry questions answered by Extension personnel was found to vary as a function of position and program. Referrals of questions to other agencies went most frequently to the West Virginia Division of Forestry and secondarily to other Extension personnel

Refining Outreach to Woodland Owners in West Virginia--Preferred Topics and Assistance Methods

Four hundred and fourteen private forest landowners in West Virginia responded to a questionnaire assessing their forest management assistance topics and delivery methods of interest. Logistic regression was used to analyze 39 independent variables in relation to the dependent variables of wanting a specific topic of forestry assistance or not. Ownership of property for investment, cultivation of wildlife food crops, and receiving assistance from the West Virginia State Division of Forestry were recurrent significant variables characterizing landowners wanting a specific assistance topic. These results can be used to develop forestry assistance programs that achieve landowner objectives and good forest management

Homeownership and Taxes : How the TCJA Altered the Tax Code's Treatment of Housing

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Landowner Characteristics Associated with Receiving Information About Invasive Plants and Implications for Outreach Providers

Based on a survey of woodland owners in West Virginia, we examined the possibility of differences in the characteristics of those who had and had not received information about local invasive plants and implications for outreach providers. Findings suggest that landowners who farmed on their property, held recreation objectives, and lived in the local area were significantly more likely than their counterparts to have received information. A majority of landowners with these characteristics, however, had not heard or read such information. Implications for expanding awareness through both traditional and non-traditional information channels are presented

Landowner willingness to engage in long-term timber leases in West Virginia, USA

As global competition increases for wood-based products, the need for more efficient supply chains becomes increasingly important. In the forest products sector, these supply chains involve individuals and firms ranging from private forestland owners with standing timber to factories producing final finished products. Under the assumption that ‘transparent’ supply chains are beneficial to members within the supply chain, the authors are investigating how this transparency can be increased and what benefits might accrue to private forest owners who are associated with a specific supply chain under a long-term agreement. In recent years, hunting lease agreements between family forest owners and various organized hunt clubs or individuals have become commonplace in the Appalachian mountains of West Virginia. Can long-term timber leases become a new opportunity for landowners, forestry professionals, and wood-based industries? This paper describes a survey of private forestland owners in West Virginia that investigated the perceived concerns, benefits and barriers landowners have with regard to entering long-term timber leases with forestry professionals and timber firms

Mapping quantitative trait loci (QTL) in sheep. IV. Analysis of lactation persistency and extended lactation traits in sheep

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In sheep dairy production, total lactation performance, and length of lactation of lactation are of economic significance. A more persistent lactation has been associated with improved udder health. An extended lactation is defined by a longer period of milkability. This study is the first investigation to examine the presence of quantitative trait loci (QTL) for extended lactation and lactation persistency in sheep.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>An (Awassi × Merino) × Merino single-sire backcross family with 172 ewes was used to map QTL for lactation persistency and extended lactation traits on a framework map of 189 loci across all autosomes. The Wood model was fitted to data from multiple lactations to estimate parameters of ovine lactation curves, and these estimates were used to derive measures of lactation persistency and extended lactation traits of milk, protein, fat, lactose, useful yield, and somatic cell score. These derived traits were subjected to QTL analyses using maximum likelihood estimation and regression analysis.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Overall, one highly significant (LOD > 3.0), four significant (2.0 < LOD < 3.0) and five suggestive (1.7 < LOD < 2.0) QTL were detected across all traits in common by both mapping methods. One additional suggestive QTL was identified using maximum likelihood estimation, and four suggestive (0.01 < P < 0.05) and two significant (P < 0.01) QTL using the regression approach only. All detected QTL had effect sizes in the range of 0.48 to 0.64 SD, corresponding to QTL heritabilities of 3.1 to 8.9%. The comparison of the detected QTL with results in cattle showed conserved linkage regions. Most of the QTL identified for lactation persistency and extended lactation did not coincide. This suggests that persistency and extended lactation for the same as well as different milk yield and component traits are not controlled by the same genes.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>This study identified ten novel QTL for lactation persistency and extended lactation in sheep, but results suggest that lactation persistency and extended lactation do not have a major gene in common. These results provide a basis for further validation in extended families and other breeds as well as targeting regions for genome-wide association mapping using high-density SNP arrays.</p

Plains Tectonism on Venus: The Deformation Belts of Lavinia Planitia

High-resolution radar images from the Magellan spacecraft have revealed the first details of the morphology of the Lavinia Planitia region of Venus. A number of geologic units can be distinguished, including volcanic plains units with a range of ages. Transecting these plains over much of the Lavinia region are two types of generally orthogonal features that we interpret to be compressional wrinkle ridges and extensional grooves. The dominant tectonic features of Lavinia are broad elevated belts of intense deformation that transect the plains with complex geometry. They are many tens to a few hundred kilometers wide, as much as 1000 km long, and elevated hundreds of meters above the surrounding plains. Two classes of deformation belts are seen in the Lavinia region. “Ridge belts” are composed of parallel ridges, each a few hundred meters in elevation, that we interpret to be folds. Typical fold spacings are 5–10 km. “Fracture belts” are dominated instead by intense faulting, with faults in some instances paired to form narrow grabens. There is also some evidence for modest amounts of horizontal shear distributed across both ridge and fracture belts. Crosscutting relationships among the belts show there to be a range in belt ages. In western Lavinia in particular, many ridge and fracture belts appear to bear a relationship to the much smaller wrinkle ridges and grooves on the surrounding plains: Ridge morphology tends to dominate belts that lie more nearly parallel to local plains wrinkle ridges, and fracture morphology tends to dominate belts that lie more nearly parallel to local plains grooves. We use simple models to explore the formation of ridge and fracture belts. We show that convective motions in the mantle can couple to the crust to cause horizontal stresses of a magnitude sufficient to induce the formation of deformation belts like those observed in Lavinia. We also use the small-scale wavelengths of deformation observed within individual ridge belts to place an approximate lower limit on the venusian thermal gradient in the Lavinia region at the time of deformation

Rapid changes in Atlantic grey seal milk from birth to weaning – immune factors and indicators of metabolic strain

True seals have the shortest lactation periods of any group of placental mammal. Most are capital breeders that undergo short, intense lactations, during which they fast while transferring substantial proportions of their body reserves to their pups, which they then abruptly wean. Milk was collected from Atlantic grey seals (Halichoerus grypus) periodically from birth until near weaning. Milk protein profiles matured within 24 hours or less, indicating the most rapid transition from colostrum to mature phase lactation yet observed. There was an unexpected persistence of immunoglobulin G almost until weaning, potentially indicating prolonged trans-intestinal transfer of IgG. Among components of innate immune protection were found fucosyllactose and siallylactose that are thought to impede colonisation by pathogens and encourage an appropriate milk-digestive and protective gut microbiome. These oligosaccharides decreased from early lactation to almost undetectable levels by weaning. Taurine levels were initially high, then fell, possibly indicative of taurine dependency in seals, and progressive depletion of maternal reserves. Metabolites that signal changes in the mother’s metabolism of fats, such as nicotinamide and derivatives, rose from virtual absence, and acetylcarnitines fell. It is therefore possible that indicators of maternal metabolic strain exist that signal the imminence of weaning.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

The effects of land use disturbance vary with trophic position in littoral cichlid fish communities from Lake Tanganyika

1. Impacts of anthropogenic disturbance are especially severe in freshwater ecosystems. In particular, land use disturbance can lead to increased levels of pollution, including elevated nutrient and sediment loads whose negative impacts range from the community to the individual level. However, few studies have investigated if these impacts are uniform across species represented by multiple trophic levels. To address this knowledge gap, we focused on Lake Tanganyika cichlid fishes, which comprise hundreds of species representing a wide range of feeding strategies. Cichlids are at their most diverse within the near‐shore environment; however, land use disturbance of this environment has led to decreasing diversity, particularly in herbivores. We therefore tested if there is a uniform effect of pollution across species and trophic groups within the hyper‐diverse rocky shore cichlid fish community. 2. We selected three sites with differing levels of human impact along the Tanzanian coastline and 10 cichlid species, comprising varying taxonomic and trophic groups, common to these sites. Nitrogen and carbon stable isotope values for 528 samples were generated and analysed using generalised linear mixed models. We also estimated stomach contents including sediment proportions. 3. Our study highlights that multiple sources of pollution are having differing effects across species within a diverse fish community. We found that nitrogen stable isotope values were significantly higher at the most disturbed (urbanised) site for benthic feeding species, whereas there was no difference in these isotopes between sites for the water column feeding trophic group. Stomach contents revealed that the elevated δ15N values were unlikely to have been caused by differences in diet between sites. However, at the most disturbed site, higher proportions of sediment were present in most herbivores, irrespective of foraging behaviour. 4. It is likely that anthropogenic nitrogen loading is the cause of higher nitrogen stable isotope values since there was no evidence of species shifting trophic levels between sites. Results support our previous study showing herbivore species to be most affected by human disturbance and make the link to pollution much more explicit. As lower diversity of consumers can negatively affect ecosystem processes such as stability, alleviating environmental impact through sewage treatment and afforestation programmes should continue to be a global priority for the conservation of aquatic ecosystems, as well as human health

Tuning of Human Modulation Filters Is Carrier-Frequency Dependent

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