Australians are being warned to take care when visiting their mums today, particularly if they are elderly.

Tiger King Joe Exotic’s new clothing line sold out within hours, netting more than US $20,000 ($A30,600). in sales, it was reported.

When watching Formula One, it can be easy to forget these drivers are taking their lives in their own hands.

Rupert Guinness is cycling across America — from his living room in Edgecliff.

Coaches are against plans for the NRL to revert back to one referee, with Raiders mentor Ricky Stuart already fearing the game has become “a 100m by 70m UFC ring”.

This will go down as the worst negotiation blunder in Australian sporting history.

Supermarket giant Aldi has issued a warning to shoppers after a labelling mistake led to the recall of a deli meat product.

It seems that banks and other lenders are doing their best to lock in our mortgages.

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.

Roads are important ecological features of forest landscapes, but their cause-andeffect relationships with other ecosystem components are only recently becoming included in integrated landscape analyses. Simulation models can help us to understand how forested landscapes respond over time to disturbance and socioeconomic factors, and potentially to address the important role roads play in these processes.

Agencies and organizations deploy various strategies in response to environmental challenges, including the formulation of policy, programs, and regulations. Citizen-based environmental stewardship is increasingly seen as an innovative and important approach to improving and conserving landscape health. A new research focus on the stewardship of urban natural resources is being launched by the U.S. Forest Service in the Pacific Northwest region. Early scoping efforts are addressing various scales of human systems ranging from individuals to organizations to the entire positive "footprint" of stewardship on the land. This report addresses a fundamental need—to understand and describe civic environmental stewardship in urban settings. Stewardship has been described and defined in diverse ways within a variety of contexts, including the philosophical literature of environmentalism, agency program descriptions, and outreach by sponsoring organizations. Constructing a framework to convey the layered meanings of stewardship will help to focus and guide future research. A cognitive mapping technique was used to elicit responses to the question "What is environmental stewardship?" Semistructured interviews were conducted with representatives of nine Seattle environmental organizations, a group of practitioners who collectively represent over 100 years of experience in the field. Program planners and managers have particularly direct experiences of stewardship. Cognitive mapping enables participants to explore, then display, their particular knowledge and perceptions about an idea or activity. Analysis generated thematic, structural representations of shared concepts. Results show that the practitioners have multilayered perceptions of stewardship, from environmental improvement to community building, and from actions to outcomes. The resulting conceptual framework demonstrates the full extent of stewardship activity and meaning, which can aid stewardship sponsors to improve stewardship programs, leading to better experiences for participants and higher quality outcomes for projects and environments.

Fungi are key players in the health, diversity, and productivity of forest ecosystems in Pacific Northwest forests, as mycorrhizal associations, pathogens, decomposers, nontimber resources, and food resources for wildlife. A number of invertebrate species are associated with wood decay fungi, serve as vectors for fungal pathogens, or are fungivorous (consume fungi) and influence rates of wood decay and nutrient mineralization. In Washington and Oregon, 31 wildlife species among 8 families are fungivores, and at least 14 wildlife species disperse fungi. Down wood can provide nurse substrates for seedlings and beneficial mycorrhizal fungi, refuges from pathogenic soil fungi, sources of nutrients for decay fungi, and substrates supporting overall fungal diversity. Presence, density, distribution, and diversity of fungi are influenced by forest stand management practices, forest age class, and effects of fire. Old forests provide for a suite of rare fungi species. Old legacy trees retained during forest harvest can provide some degree of conservation of beneficial and rare fungi. Fungi can be difficult to detect and monitor; surveying for fungi at various times of the year, for multiple (at least 5) years, and by including hypogeous (belowground) samples, can improve detection rates. Studies are needed in the Pacific Northwest to quantify the amount of down wood—number of pieces, sizes, total biomass, percentage of forest floor cover, and other attributes—necessary for maintaining or restoring fungal biodiversity and viable levels of individual fungi species, especially rare species.

The Silvies Valley Ranch is an example of using local innovation to combat the global problem of incised streams on rangelands. Incised channels reduce the flow between water in the channel and water in the surrounding soils, which reduces the vegetation available for wildlife habitat and cattle forage. One of the ranch owners, Scott Campbell, a doctor of veterinary medicine, believes that stream incision is related to the decline of beaver populations; thus, the ranch’s approach to restoration includes efforts to mimic beavers’ influence on the system. He is using an extensive network of low-rise dams made from locally available materials (dirt, gravel, rock, and logs), commonly referred to as “artificial beaver dams” (ABDs). Campbell said that the ABDs on the ranch successfully increased stream connectivity to their floodplains and increased the quantity and forage quality of wet meadows on the property, with no changes in where cattle were grazing. The experiences of this landowner exemplify a unique approach that provides a model for others facing similar challenges to doing restoration on private land. The transformation taking place on the Silvies Valley Ranch has garnered the attention of neighboring ranch owners, some of whom are beginning to experiment with similar restoration technologies. Campbell would like to continue installing structures, but has encountered numerous roadblocks in the permitting process. He has since taken an active role in building legislative support for the ABD technology being used on the ranch, and in facilitating its adoption in other places. This case study—based on interviews with stakeholders involved in the Silvies Valley Ranch project—highlights the social benefits and challenges experienced by one rancher using ABDs as a restoration tool, and provides insights for improving their use in the future. It is part of a larger interdisciplinary study that explores the potential of different beaver-related restoration approaches for achieving watershed restoration and livestock production goals on rangelands in the Western United States.

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

While it is not illegal to have a bonfire, some Surrey councils are urging residents not to light them

National forests and grasslands are home to a diverse array of wildlife.

Earth's climate is changing, as evidenced by warming temperatures, increased temperature variability, fluctuating precipitation patterns, and climate-related environmental disturbances.

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

Higher global temperatures are changing ecosystems in the Arctic. They are becoming greener as the climate and land become more hospitable to taller vegetation.

Much of the water supply in the Pacific Northwest originates in national forests. It sustains the region’s aquatic ecosystems, agriculture, hydroelectric power, and community water supplies.

Since 1960, the Forest Service has been guided by the multiple-use concept, which recognizes five major uses for public lands-timber, water, range, recreation, and fish and wildlife habitat-and mandates that all five should be equally considered in management plans.

Effectively addressing wildfire risk to communities on large multi-owner landscapes requires an understanding of the biophysical factors that influence risk, such as fuel loads, topography, and weather, and social factors such as the capacity and willingness for communities to engage in fire-mitigation activities.

Mount St. Helens' explosive eruption on May 18, 1980, was a pivotal moment in the field of disturbance ecology.

Land use and climate change are two key factors with the potential to affect stream conditions and fish habitat. Since the 1950s, Washington and Oregon have required forest practices designed to mitigate the effects of timber harvest on streams and fish.

Martens are small forest carnivores associated with dense, mature forests.

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.

Landscape exposure to multiple stressors can pose risks to human health, biodiversity, and ecosystem services. Attempts to study, control, or mitigate these stressors can strain public and private budgets. An interdisciplinary team of Pacific Northwest Research Station and Oregon State University scientists created maps of the conterminous United States that indicate landscape exposure to concentrated wildfire potential, insects and disease risk, urban and exurban development, and climate change. The maps, which show where these stressors might occur and overlap, provide a valuable resource for regional and national land use, land management, and policymaking efforts by helping to guide resource prioritization.

Interest in landscape-scale approaches to fire management and forest restoration is growing with the realization that these approaches are critical to maintaining healthy forests and protecting nearby communities. However, coordinated planning and action across multiple ownerships have been elusive because of differing goals and forest management styles among landowners. Scientists with the Pacific Northwest Research Station and their colleagues recognized that working at the landscape scale requires integrating the biophysical, social, and economic dimensions of the problem, and this necessitates collecting new types of information and inventing new tools.

Resource managers have long mapped biophysical forest data. Often lacking, however, is relevant social science data for understanding the variety of human needs a given landscape fulfills.

Air quality is a critical issue affecting the health of billions of people worldwide, yet often little is known about what is in the air we breathe. To reduce air pollution’s health impacts, pollution sources must first be reliably identified. Otherwise, it is impossible to design and effectively enforce environmental standards. However, urban networks of air quality monitors are often too widely spaced to identify the sources of air pollutants, especially for pollutants that do not disperse far from their sources. Developing high-resolution pollution maps with data from these widely spaced monitors is problematic.

Increasing the population of spring Chinook salmon and summer steelhead in Washington state’s Methow River is a goal of the Upper Columbia Spring Chinook Salmon and Steelhead Recovery Plan. Spring Chinook salmon and summer steelhead are listed as endangered and threatened, respectively, under the Endangered Species Act.

Although burned trees are the most visible damage following a wildfire, a forest’s soil can also be damaged. The heat generated by a wildfire can alter the soil’s physical properties and kill the fungi and bacteria that are responsible for nutrient cycling and other ecosystem services. What isn’t well understood is the extent of the heating within the soil and how quickly the soil recovers.

Millions of people head to federal lands every year for recreation—891 million visits in 2016 alone. These visits have significant economic implications, not only for restaurants, resorts, outfitters, and other businesses near recreation sites, but also for the people actually participating in outdoor recreation.

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.

Diameter growth is seasonal in Douglas-fir, the evergreen tree found in much of western Washington, Oregon, and northern California. Initiation and cessation of diameter growth are both triggered by environmental cues. The tree responds to these cues to improve its chances of growing under favorable conditions. As environmental conditions change, however, land managers want to know how warmer summers and falls may affect diameter growth in Douglas-fir.

The marbled murrelet (Brachyramphus marmoratus) is a threatened coastal bird that feeds on fish and nests in old-growth forests. In northwest Washington, murrelet populations are declining despite protections provided by the Northwest Forest Plan.

Principal findings of the National Fire and Fire Surrogate (FFS) study are presented in an annotated bibliography and summarized in tabular form by site, discipline (ecosystem component), treatment type, and major theme. Composed of 12 sites, the FFS is a comprehensive multidisciplinary experiment designed to evaluate the costs and ecological consequences of alternative fuel reduction treatments in seasonally dry forests of the United States. The FFS has a common experimental design across the 12-site network, with each site a fully replicated experiment that compares four treatments: prescribed fi re, mechanical treatments, mechanical + prescribed fire, and an unmanipulated control. We measured treatment cost and variables within several components of the ecosystem, including vegetation, the fuel bed, soils, bark beetles, tree diseases, and wildlife in the same 10-ha experimental units. This design allowed us to assemble a fairly comprehensive picture of ecosystem response to treatment at the site scale, and to compare treatment response across a wide variety of conditions.

Black spruce (Picea mariana (Mill) B.S.P) is the dominant forest cover type in interior Alaska and is prone to frequent, stand-replacing wildfires.

Old-growth forests provide unique habitat features and landscape functions compared to younger stands. The goals of many forest management plans in the Pacific Northwest include increasing the area of late-successional and old-growth forests.

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.

Two series of single and stereo photographs display a range of natural conditions and fuel loadings in post-hurricane forests in the southeastern United States. Each group of photos includes inventory information summarizing vegetation composition, structure and loading, woody material loading and density by size class, forest floor loading, and various site characteristics. The natural fuels photo series is designed to help land managers appraise fuel and vegetation conditions in natural settings.

Applying a simple method of centering single level variable width, float left menus.

Tree Frog menu revised to have scrolling sub menu lists to save space.

A fluid layout with max/min width, header/footer and multiple percentage columns ALL reaching the footer using NO images.

A centered dropline, dropdown, flyout menu, using the latest centering technique, with current selection option

A dropline menu which uses sliding doors tabs for the top level and a horizontal scrolling dropline which has images and caption.

A CSS only method of hovering over a horizontal menu link to change the whole menu background image.

After much searching of the web and with the arrival of IE8, I now have a method of positioning horizontal menus of unknown width left / center / right in the containing element.

A photograph gallery using just html/css to switch the contents of an 'object' for browsers that understand and an iframe alternative for IE.