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Comments Welcome The White River National Forest (WRNF) welcomes your comments on its proposal to conduct vegetation management activities designed to sustain and expand aspen (Populus tremuloides) forests on National Forest System (NFS) lands. Your comments will help us further develop the proposed action, potential alternatives, and complete an environmental assessment. The assessment will be used to determine whether to prepare an environmental impact statement or a finding of no significant impact. Instructions for submitting comments are described on the last page. Additional project information is available here: https://www.fs.usda.gov/project/?project=59419 This Notice of Proposed Action (NOPA) is also requesting your comments under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, as amended (NHPA). Consultation under the NHPA seeks to consider the views about an undertaking and its effects on historic properties for the agency official to consider in decision making (36 CFR 800). Introduction The WRNF is proposing to conduct vegetation management activities (mechanical and prescribed fire) within forest stands1 that contain aspen. Management activities would be designed to improve the resiliency of aspen forests to disturbance agents, improve wildlife habitat, increase the distribution of aspen on NFS lands, manage aspen along scenic corridors, and contribute to the Forest’s allowable sale quantity. Mechanical operations would use existing roads where possible and would also include the use of temporary roads to access treatment areas. Management activities and locations would be selected based on the applicable Forest Plan Management Area direction, project objectives, stand conditions, and constraints.

Summarizes information on wood as an engineering material. Presents properties of wood and wood-based products of particular concern to the architect and engineer. Includes discussion of designing with wood and wood-based products along with some pertinent uses.

In the 15 western states there are at least 28 million acres of forest that could benefit from some type of mechanical treatment to reduce hazardous fuel loading. It is estimated that about 60 percent of this area could be operationally accessible for treatment with a total biomass treatment volume of 345 million bone dry tons (bdt). Two-thirds of this forest area is on public lands. Most of the volume is in trees 6 inches diameter and greater that have conventional utilization opportunities. Transportation cost and distance to markets, however, may preclude actual recovery. Treatment costs are increased by the need to treat large numbers of low-volume stems less than 4 inches in diameter. Gross costs can range from $35 to over $1000 per acre depending on type of operation, terrain, and number of trees to be treated. Some areas will likely be prohibitively expensive to treat, although cost estimates presented here may be high because they are based on the use of conventional timber harvesting systems applied to small diameter treatments. Implementation of any significant fuel reduction effort will generate large volumes of biomass and require the development of additional workforce and operations capacity in western forests.

A decadent, mixed stand of Wyoming big sagebrush, Artemisia tridentata wyomingensis, and mountain big sagebrush, Artemisia tridentata vaseyana, located north of Cisco, Utah, was subjected to one-way and two-way chaining treatments in November 1987. The effect of the treatments on plant community characteristics and shrub vigor was documented over a 3-year period. Stand density was reduced 60 percent on sites chained two ways and 43 percent on sites chained over once. Shrubs on one-way chained sites produced more leader growth in 1989 and 1990 than those on untreated sites or sites chained two ways. Browse production on one-way chained sites surpassed that of untreated sites and two-way chained sites by 140 percent and 350 percent, respectively. Over the short term, a one-way chaining was shown to be an effective method for improving sagebrush vigor and production on a critical mule deer winter range.