BACKGROUND Ionic liquids (ILs) draw attention as green solvents for pretreatment of lignocellulose before enzymatic saccharification. Imidazolium-based ILs with different anionic constituents ([HSO4]-, [Cl]-, [MeCO2]-) were compared with regard to pretreatment of wood from aspen and spruce. The objective was to elucidate how the choice of anionic constituent affected the suitability of using th...

ISSN 0738-4602 n The challenging timeline for DARPA’s Orbital Express mission demanded a flexible, responsive, and (above all) safe approach to mission planning. Mission planning for space is challenging because of the mixture of goals and constraints. Every space mission tries to squeeze all of the capacity possible out of the spacecraft. For Orbital Express, this means performing as many expe...

Nestedness and modularity are measures of ecological networks whose causative effects are little understood. We analyzed antagonistic plant-herbivore bipartite networks using common gardens in two contrasting environments comprised of aspen trees with differing evolutionary histories of defence against herbivores. These networks were tightly connected owing to a high level of specialization of ...

We monitored sap flow and estimated diurnal changes in transpiration rates of two trembling aspen (Populus tremuloides Michx.) stands, located in the southern boreal forest and aspen parkland of Saskatchewan, Canada. In both stands during the peak growing season (June and July), sap flow during the day (0700-1700 h local time) increased linearly with vapor pressure deficit (VPD) from 0 to about...

A new instrument called a Multiband Vegetation Imager (MVI) (Kucharik et al., 1997), which uses a 16-bit charge-coupled device (CCD) camera and ®lter exchange mechanism to capture 2-band (visible and near-infrared) image pairs of plant canopies, has been used to measure the light distribution over sunlit leaves and indirectly infer leaf area index (LAI), sunlit LAI and leaf angle distribution (...

Effects of shoot water potential (Psi) and leaf-to-atmosphere vapor pressure difference (VPD) on gas exchange of jack pine (Pinus banksiana Lamb.), black spruce (Picea mariana (Mill.) B.S.P.), and aspen (Populus tremuloides Michx.) were investigated at the northern edge of the boreal forest in Manitoba, Canada. Laboratory measurements on cut branches showed that net photosynthesis (A(n)) and me...

Please cite this article in press as: Ripple, W.J., (2011), doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2011.11.005 The 1995/1996 reintroduction of gray wolves (Canis lupus) into Yellowstone National Park after a 70 year absence has allowed for studies of tri-trophic cascades involving wolves, elk (Cervus elaphus), and plant species such as aspen (Populus tremuloides), cottonwoods (Populus spp.), and willows (Salix s...