Increasing housing density is generally assumed to confer negative effects on forest breeding birds. This implies we should build at low density over the landscape to conserve these species. However, for a given human population, low-density development must cover a large area, resulting in sprawl. A pertinent question is then: at what housing density are the impacts of a given human population...

In the United States and Canada, pine forest ecosystems are being dramatically affected by an unprecedented pine beetle infestation attributed to climate change. Both decreased frequency of extremely cold days and warmer winter temperature averages have led to an enphytotic devastating millions of acres of pine forest. The associated ecosystem disruption has the potential to cause significant h...

An important element of resource management and conservation is an understanding of the tradeoffs between marketed products such as timber and measures of environmental quality such as biodiversity. In this paper, we develop an integrated economic – ecological spatial optimization model. The integrated model incorporates dynamic forest sector harvesting, oil and gas sector development, coarse f...

We present a collection of papers derived from the 2012 Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) Symposium held on December 4-6, 2012 in Baltimore, MD, USA. The symposium featured 128 oral presentations with nearly 200 attendees from the United States and other countries. A proceedings from the symposium included 75 papers as well as abstracts for all presentations and posters. The symposium theme, ...

Nonindigenous forest insects and pathogens affect a range of ecosystems, industries, and property owners in the United States. Evaluating temporal patterns in the accumulation of these nonindigenous forest pests can inform regulatory and policy decisions. We compiled a comprehensive species list to assess the accumulation rates of nonindigenous forest insects and pathogens established in the Un...

1. Range expansions mediated by recent climate warming have been documented for many insect species, including some important forest pests. However, whether climate change also influences the eruptive dynamics of forest pest insects, and hence the ecological and economical consequences of outbreaks, is largely unresolved. 2. Using historical outbreak records covering more than a century, we doc...

This research evaluates the utility and performance of a machine learning decision tree classification technique – random forests – for forest classification using remote sensing and ancillary spatial data, across a large area of heterogeneous forest ecosystems in Victoria, Australia. Random forest classification models for forest extent, type and height were trained using 786 2 km x 2 km aeria...

Forest environmental conditions are affected by climate change, but investments in forest environmental quality can be used as part of the climate change mitigation strategy. A key question involving the potential use of forests to store more carbon as part of climate change mitigation is the impact of forest investments on the timing and quantity of forest volumes that affect carbon storage. U...

Heightened interest in renewable energy has produced a spate of new research into the feasibility of forest biomass as a feedstock. The US Northeast is one of the few regions worldwide that supports both a large forest resource and a relatively high population density and hence energy demand. This paper outlines economic, ecological, and social considerations that must be addressed in order to ...