Grand Canyon National Park fire resources completed ignition operations on the Long Jim Prescribed Fire. Crews will continue to patrol the unit and mop up any areas along the fires perimeter that may threaten the holding line. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/fire-resources-at-grand-canyon-complete-ignition-operations-on-long-jim-rx.htm

The National Park Service is conducting a missing person search within Grand Canyon National Park.  https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/missing-person.htm

The National Park Service (NPS) is conducting a missing person search at Grand Canyon National Park for Martin Edward O'Connor, 58, of La Porte, Texas, last seen on Dec. 22, 2019, at Yavapai Lodge on the South Rim of Grand Canyon. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/missing-person-search-initiated-at-grand-canyon-2019-12-30.htm

The National Park Service will begin accepting applications for noncommercial river trip permits to raft the Colorado River through Grand Canyon National Park on Saturday, Feb. 1, 2020. The permits are for specific launch dates within calendar year 2021. A total of 462 permits will be available for 12- to 25-day river trips. Applications will be accepted online through noon MST on Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2020. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/2021-river-lottery-01-31-2020.htm

Shuttle bus service between Grand Canyon National Park Visitor Center and the neighboring town of Tusayan, will resume on March 1, 2020. Buses will run daily at 20-minute intervals between 8 a.m. and 9:30 p.m. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/grca-tusayan-shuttle-begins-march-1-2020.htm

Grand Canyon National Park is initiating water conservation measures for the South Rim and inner canyon from March 7-22, 2020. A leak was detected along the transcanyon pipeline near Phanton Ranch, and park staff are working to repair the break. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/water-conservation-measures-03-17-2020.htm

North Carolina researchers are now trying to spread the word about their tried-and-true decontamination method for surgical masks.

The post Researchers Have Found a Way to Sterilize and Reuse Face Masks During Pandemic appeared first on Good News Network.

In addition to EV batteries being reused in 7-11 stores, their minerals can also provide many raw materials needed to run our world.

The post Old Electric Vehicle Batteries Can Be Recycled into New Sources of Energy—Even Used to Power 7-11 Stores appeared first on Good News Network.

Western Australia will establish a multi-million-dollar fund to boost research into the coronavirus and to ramp up the state's testing regime.

A resident who died in Sydney's Newmarch House had recovered from coronavirus and died of an unrelated illness, NSW Health says.

A driver who smashed into a female cyclist, injuring her badly, then drove off should hand himself in, police say.

The New Zealand Cabinet will meet on Monday to decide whether restrictions can be eased allowing domestic travel to restart and most businesses to open. There have been four new recorded infections in the past five days, and 90 percent of approximately 1500 confirmed or probable cases, have recovered from the virus. As the New Zealand and Australian economies reopen, a Trans-Tasman travel bubble could emerge as a serious possibility, if both nations continue to effectively flatten their coronavirus curves. Image: Associated Press

Commercial thinning in fully-stocked normal Douglas-fir stands of merchantable size is evaluated and compared to the alternatives of leaving stands to grow unthinned or of liquidating them. Comparisons are made in terms of volume production and financial returns.

Cofiring wood and coal at Fairbanks, Alaska, area electrical generation facilities represents an opportunity to use woody biomass from clearings within the borough's wildland-urban interface and from other sources, such as sawmill residues and woody material intended for landfills. Potential benefits of cofiring include air quality improvements, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, market and employment development opportunities, and reduction of municipal wood residues at area landfills. Important issues that must be addressed to enable cofiring include wood chip uniformity and quality, fuel mixing procedures, transportation and wood chip processing costs, infrastructure requirements, and long-term biomass supply. Additional steps in implementing successful cofiring programs could include test burns, an assessment of area biomass supply and treatment needs, and a detailed economic and technical feasibility study. Although Fairbanks North Star Borough is well positioned to use biomass for cofiring at coal burning facilities, long-term cofiring operations would require expansion of biomass sources beyond defensible-space-related clearings alone. Long-term sources could potentially include a range of woody materials including forest harvesting residues, sawmill residues, and municipal wastes.

Here are some of the negatives I've faced while trying to make use of my daily permitted exercise

Sustainable working landscapes are critical to the conservation of biodiversity in the American West and its cultures of rural ranching and forestry.

Alaska’s Arctic tundra is one of the most rapidly warming regions in the world. For years, scientists have been working to interpret the effects of its changing climate and determine what these changes may mean for the rest of the planet. Coarse-scale satellite imagery of much of this region shows the tundra is becoming greener. This has been widely attributed to shrub expansion.

Accurate measurements of natural resources are a prerequisite for resource assessment. Demetrios Gatziolis, a scientist with the USDA Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station, and his colleagues with Washington State University developed and tested protocols for using structure-from-motion photogrammetry to obtain data that can be used to construct 3-dimensional (3-D) representations of trees, other vegetation, and down wood. This type of photogrammetry is a remote-sensing technique based on a sequence of digital images or video footage. Gatziolis and his colleagues focused on developing protocols for using it under the forest canopy. Their method can serve as a guide for others interested in obtaining inexpensive, precise 3-D data of trees in field plots. The researchers continue to perfect the technology so it can be reliably deployed by field crews with a minimal amount of training.

This guidebook describes The Island Research Natural Area, an 84-ha (208-ac) tract established to represent examples of the western juniper/big sagebrush/bluebunch wheatgrass (Juniperus occidentalis/Artemisia tridentata/Pseudoroegneria spicata), and the western juniper/big sagebrush-antelope bitterbrush/bluebunch wheatgrass (Juniperus occidentalis/Artemisia tridentata-Purshia tridentata/Pseudoroegneria spicata) plant associations.

This guidebook describes Horse Ridge Research Natural Area, a 243-ha (600-ac) tract established to represent an example of the western juniper/big sagebrush/ threadleaf sedge (Juniperus occidentalis/Artemisia tridentata/Carex filifolia) plant association.

Excess nitrogen stemming from human activities is a common water pollutant. Fertilizer runoff, sewage, and fossil fuel emission all contain nitrogen that often ends in streams, rivers, and ultimately the ocean.

We describe a food-based system for quantitatively evaluating habitat quality for deer called the Forage Resource Evaluation System for Habitat and provide its rationale and suggestions for use. The system was developed as a tool for wildlife biologists and other natural resource managers and planners interested in evaluating habitat quality and, especially, comparing two or more patches of habitat or the same patch at different seasons or under different conditions. It is based on the quantity (of biomass) and quality (digestible energy and digestible protein) of the habitat's food resources in relation to user-specified metabolic requirements of deer (which differ with species, age, sex, season, and reproductive status). It uses a linear programming algorithm to determine the suitable forage that can sustain deer at the specified requirements.

A circular menu with CSS3 enhancements.

A circular icon menu with circular icon sub menus and animation.

A CSS3 animation to stretch a search box on focus.

Using CSS3 to rotate a set of thumbnail images and display a large images, all with a cick of a button.

Using just CSS to produce a circular set of icons with enlarge on hover.

A circular corner menu with animation.

A CSS only method of producing percentage border widths and text sizing without using @media queries.

A CSS only circular menu with bounce animation using cubic-bezier timing.

An update to a previous circular menu (July 2011) using the latest CSS techniques.

This report summarizes resource statistics for eastern Oregon's juniper forests, which are in Baker, Crook, Deschutes, Gilliam, Grant, Harney, Jefferson, Klamath, Lake, Malheur, Morrow, Sherman, Umatilla, Union, Wallowa, Wasco, and Wheeler Counties. We sampled all ownerships outside of the National Forest System; we report the statistics on juniper forest on national forest lands by using data from the national forest, Pacific Northwest Region inventory. Statistical tables summarize the area covered by juniper trees and juniper forest, wood volume, and numbers of trees, by ownership and juniper type. We found juniper on an estimated 6.5 million acres, a little more than half that was considered forest land. Evidence suggests that amount of forest land will continue to increase.

In the information overload age, the user needs to find... more

DensityDesign Research Lab took part in the Digital Methods Initiative... more

In recent years, the Forest Service and the public have placed increasing priority on making sure that management of public lands takes into account the needs of nearby communities, regional residents, national residents, and even members of the public who may not currently visit public lands.

This report highlights key findings from the most recent (2001-2005) data collected by the Forest Inventory and Analysis Program across all forest land in California.

This report highlights key findings from the most recent (2001-2005) data collected by the Pacific Northwest Forest Inventory and Analysis (PNW-FIA) Program across all ownerships in Oregon.

Edge-glued panels could become a natural extension for the birch (Betula papyrifera Marsh.) lumber industry in Alaska, resulting in greater utilization of the birch resource while allowing producers to explore a wider variety of products and markets.

Forest managers are seeking practical guidance on how to adapt their current practices and, if necessary, their management goals, in response to climate change. Science-management collaboration was initiated on national forests in eastern Washington where resource managers showed a keen interest in science-based options for adapting to climate change at a 2-day workshop. Scientists and managers reviewed current climate change science and identified resources vulnerable to expected climate change. Vulnerabilities related to vegetation and habitat management included potential reductions in forest biodiversity and low forest resilience to changing disturbance regimes. The vulnerabilities related to aquatic and infrastructure resources included changing water quality and quantity, the risk to roads and other facilities from changes to hydrologic regimes, and the potential loss of at-risk aquatic species and habitats. Managers then worked in facilitated groups to identify adaptations that could be implemented through management and planning to reduce the vulnerability of key resources to climate change. The identified adaptations were grouped under two major headings: Increasing Ecological Resiliency to Climate Change, and Increasing Social and Economic Resiliency to Climate Change. The information generated from the science-management collaborative represents an initial and important step in identifying and prioritizing tangible steps to address climate change in forest management. Next would be the development of detailed implementation strategies that address the identified management adaptations..

When you create software that you want to share, or you use a product that you want to adapt, questions about what is and is not legal pop up. Even programs that have an open source license aren’t free-for-alls. If you don’t know the specifics of what the license allows, you could get into legal […]

The post A Quick Guide to Open Source Licenses appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.

October 2012—When you hear the word “ecosystem,” what comes to mind? A forest? A river, maybe? Well, how about a city? It turns out, the green spaces in our urban areas can offer a range of ecosystem services, just like forests and rivers. Station scientists are working to better understand cities as ecosystems and demonstrate how nearby nature provides important benefits and services. (4:19)

The Pacific Northwest Research Station launched a Biodiversity Initiative to assist natural resource professionals in integrating complex biodiversity concepts into natural resource management processes. We canvassed clients from various affiliations to determine the main challenges they face in biodiversity management, to define their information needs, and to understand how best to deliver biodiversity information within a collaborative framework. The biodiversity management challenges that emerged included (1) the lack of well-defined biodiversity management policies, (2) understanding and quantifying the interaction effects between a number of factors (e.g., disturbance types, management practices) and biodiversity, (3) the lack of applied biodiversity monitoring strategies, (4) difficulty in locating and accessing biodiversity information, and (5) balancing conflicting values relating to biodiversity. We also list the biodiversity information product needs of clients, as well as preferred technology transfer methods, and we discuss the future direction of the Biodiversity Initiative.

This problem analysis describes a variety of human-resource interaction issues and identifies related social science research and development needs that serve as the foundation for the Alaska Communities and Forest Environments Team within the Pacific Northwest Research Station. The document lays out a research agenda that focuses on understanding relations between human communities and natural resources.

Integrated research is about achieving holistic understanding of complex biophysical and social issues and problems. It is driven by the need to improve understanding about such systems and to improve resource management by using the results of integrated research processes. Traditional research tends to fragment complex problems, focusing more on the pieces of problems rather than the whole that comprises multiple interrelationships and interactions. The outcome is that a lot is known about the parts (e.g., recreation, fish, and wildlife) but relatively little about how they are interrelated. There seems to be general agreement that integrated questions must drive the search for integrated understanding, but tradition, inertia, institutional culture,budgets, training, and lack of effective leadership foster reductionism (at worst) or minimal degrees of integration (at best) rather than any substantial, sustainable effort toward integrated research. In this paper, a phased approach to framing integrated research questions and addressing the substantial barriers that impede integrated efforts are discussed. A key conclusion is that to make any significant progress toward comprehensive integrated research will require more than rhetoric. Progress must begin with more effective leadership throughout various levels of research organizations.

This guidebook describes the High Peak/Moon Creek Research Natural Area, a 617.5-ha (1,526-ac) tract of coniferous forest containing stands dominated by 100- to 150-year-old Douglas-fir, a small old-growth (500+ years) Douglas-fir stand, and riparian vegetation within the western hemlock zone of the Coast Range in western Oregon.

This report summarizes timber resource statistics for the 20 counties in eastern Washington. The inventory sampled all private and public lands except those administered by the National Forest System in 2001, and those that were reserved from management for wood products.

Roger Lake Research Natural Area (RNA), a 174.7-ha reserve in north-central Washington, contains a rich diversity of landforms, plant communities, and wildlife habitats. Spreading outward from the lake itself, sedge and sphagnum fens give way to upland coniferous forest, granitic cliffs, and a relictual, high-altitude big sagebrush-whitebark pine (Artemisia tridentata-Pinus albicaulis) meadow. Five sensitive plant species and several vertebrate species that are rare in the region occur in the RNA. Dynamic ecological processes in action in the RNA are revealed in the paludification of the forest edge; aging, broken beaver dams; and widespread bark beetle-induced conifer mortality.