Background Reading: Department of Agriculture, 2013 Budget Overview

57 pages. Fiscal Year 2013 Budget Overview February 2012 Background Reading The Future of Natural Resources Policy: This forum will provide a post-election perspective on some of the challenges and opportunities that natural resources, public lands, and energy policymakers in Washington are likely to face in the next four years. An expert panel will discuss the dynamics in the Department of the Interior, the Department of Agriculture, and Congress, and how their evolving policies are likely to affect Colorado in the coming years

Quaking Aspen - Seed Germination and Early Seedling Growth

The suckering of aspen (Populus tremuliodes Michx.) as a highly effective means of vegetative propagation is well known and has been widely studied (Baker 1918; Day 1944; Maini 1967; Schier 1974). Less is known about seed propagation, sometimes viewed as having only minor importance because early research (Baker 1918) had indicated that rare seedling establishment was due to low or nonexistent germinability

Background Reading: Department of Agriculture, 2013 Budget Overview

57 pages. Fiscal Year 2013 Budget Overview February 2012 Background Reading The Future of Natural Resources Policy: This forum will provide a post-election perspective on some of the challenges and opportunities that natural resources, public lands, and energy policymakers in Washington are likely to face in the next four years. An expert panel will discuss the dynamics in the Department of the Interior, the Department of Agriculture, and Congress, and how their evolving policies are likely to affect Colorado in the coming years

Prehistory of Long Valley, Idaho

This thesis deals with a group of artifact collections gathered by local amateurs from a series of sites along the western shoreline of Cascade Reservoir. This study uses these artifacts as a basis to put together a preliminary view of Long Valley prehistory. Outlines of the basic artifact types are formulated and placed into a chronology based upon typological comparisons and obsidian hydration. Previous archaeological work, the ethnohistory, and local geology of the valley are discussed and related ot the sites, used in this study, in order to determine their patterns and characteristics. From these efforts directions for further research and questions concerning the valley\u27s prehistory will be fostered

Modeling Moisture Content of Fine Dead Wildland Fuels: Input to the BEHAVE Fire Prediction System

A method for predicting the time-dependent nature of fine fuel moisture is badly needed to support fire behavior prediction systems used in fire management. Of the models available, none met all the requirements of the BEHAVE fire behavior prediction system. The Canadian Fire Fuel Moisture Code (FFMC) came closest to meeting our needs and was selected as a base model. Improvements to the FFMC were concentrated on providing a means of accounting for annual and diurnal variation due to solar heating of woody fuels. This was necessary because the FFMC was developed for fuels located within forest stands, a generally shaded condition. Solar heating raises the temperature of the fuel surface and lowers the relative humidity of the film of air surrounding the fuel particle. Formulas describing this near-fuel environment produce the temperature and relative humidity that are then used by FFMC to derive the moisture content. The solar intensity that drives the fuel temperature and relative humidity accounts for latitude, time of year, time of day, aspect, slope, elevation, atmospheric haze, and shade. Shade can be from clouds or overstory trees. Provisions are made to guide the user through tree descriptors necessary to determine expected amount of shade

A Partial Glossary of Elk Management Terms

This glossary helps define terms that have been misused during forest planning. Terms that were developed from research on the influences of timber sales and roads during the summer months have been used inappropriately when referring to winter range, hunting seasons, and other conditions. The glossary is based on the results of an Elk Management Terminology Workshop held at the University of Montana\u27s Lubrecht Experimental Forest on April 3-4, 1990

Container-Grown Ponderosa Pine Seedlings Outperform Bareroot Seedlings on Harsh Sites in Southern Utah

Reforestation of ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa Dougl. ex Laws.) on the lower elevations of the Dixie National Forest in southern Utah has traditionally been challenging. Replanting has often been necessary, costly, and not always successful. Although this problem is not unique, the low levels of available soil moisture during the spring planting season are probably as critical in the Dixie as anywhere in the Intermountain Region. Until this study was initiated, only bareroot seedlings had been planted

Soluble Sugar Concentrations in Needles and Bark of Western White Pine in Response to Season and Blister Rust

Amounts of soluble sugars in certain tissues of 12- to 16-year-old western white pine (Pinus monticola Dougl.) trees, each with a blister rust canker girdling about 50 percent of the bole circumference, were compared with rust-free trees. Fructose, glucose, sucrose, raffinose, and stachyose extracted from needles and healthy and diseased bark were identified with thin-layer chromatography and quantified with a densitometer. The host\u27s seasonal growth cycle induced changes in sugar concentrations in current, 1- and 2-year needles, but the bole cankers did not. Amounts of bark sugars characterized the activities of the rust fungus (Cronartium ribicola J.C. Fisch.) as well as the fall, winter, and summer seasons. The amounts of sugars in the bark decreased toward the cankers\u27 centers except for raffinose and stachyose. The greatest differences in amounts of sugars in rusted and nonrusted bark tissues were found in February

Logging Utilization - Utah, 1993

Data collected on 20 logging operations in Utah in 1993 provided board-foot and cubic-foot conversion factors of log scale and factors to apply to harvest volume estimates to obtain removals estimates. The components of timber products and removals, obtained by application of these factors to the 1992 Utah timber harvest, are included. Additional findings, presented in table form, are the diameter distribution of trees removed from growing stock per thousand cubic ft of products and the volume of logging residue in pieces 6 ft and longer as a proportion of product volume. Survey methods and estimates of data reliability are also presented

Fall 1998 Raptor Migrations Study in the Wellsville Mountains of Northern Utah

The Wellsville Mountains raptor migration study in northern Utah is an ongoing effort to monitor longterm trends in populations of raptors using this northern Rocky Mountain migratory flyway. Raptors feed atop food pyramids, inhabit most ecosystems, occupy large home ranges, and are sensitive to environmental contamination and other human disturbances. Therefore, they serve as important biological indicators of ecosystem health (Cade et al. 1988; Bednarz et al. 1990a; Bildstein and Zalles 1995). For example, long-term migration counts in the eastern United States documented declines in several raptor species and helped us understand the deleterious effects of organochlorine pesticides (Spofford 1969, Mueller et al. 1988, Bednarz et al. 1990b). Migration counts, in particular, may also represent the most cost-effective and efficient method for monitoring the regional status and trends of multiple raptor species (Bednarz and Kerlinger 1989, Titus et al. 1989, Bildstein and Zalles 1995, Bildstein et al. 1995, Dunn and Hussell 1995, Dixon et al. 1998, Hoffman et al. in review)