Decaying wood plays an important role in forest biodiversity, nutrient cycling and carbon balance. Community structure of wood-inhabiting fungi changes with mass loss of wood, but the relationship between substrate quality and decomposers is poorly understood. This limits the extent to which these ecosystem services can be effectively managed. We studied the fungal community and physico-chemica...

Several key enzymes in lignin biosynthesis of Populus have been down-regulated by transgenic approaches to investigate their role in wood lignification and to explore their potential for lignin modification. Cinnamate 4-hydroxylase is an enzyme in the early phenylpropanoid pathway that has not yet been functionally analyzed in Populus . This study shows that down-regulation of cinnamate 4-hydro...

Pneumonitis due to hypersensitivity to wood fiber is mainly associated with the fungus that colonizes it. We present the case of a male affected with hypersensitivity pneumonitis in which the agent implicated was medium-density fiberboard, an engineered product whose main component is pine wood fiber. The causal agent was identified by means of a specific bronchial provocation test.

In tropical and temperate trees, wood chemical traits are hypothesized to covary with species' life-history strategy along a 'wood economics spectrum' (WES), but evidence supporting these expected patterns remains scarce. Due to its role in nutrient storage, we hypothesize that wood nitrogen (N) concentration will covary along the WES, being higher in slow-growing species with high wood density...

Understanding drought sensitivity of tree species and its intra-specific variation is required to estimate the effects of climate change on forest productivity, carbon sequestration and tree mortality as well as to develop adaptive forest management measures. Here, we studied the variation of drought reaction of six European Abies species and ten provenances of Abies alba planted in the drought...

In this work the problem of measuring density and verifying structural integrity of wooden samples is approached by using non-contact ultrasonic transducers. The time of flight of the ultrasonic waves is measured in transmission mode using cross-correlation algorithms between emitted and received signals. Once known the times of flight, the propagation velocity through the wood, which is propor...

Forest ecosystems play an important role in the global carbon cycle. Therefore, understanding the dynamics of carbon uptake in forest ecosystems is much needed. Pinus cooperi is a widely distributed species in the Sierra Madre Occidental in northern Mexico and future climatic variations could impact these ecosystems. Here, we analyze the variations of trunk carbon in two populations of P. coope...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Although mangroves have been extensively studied, little is known about their ecological wood anatomy. This investigation examined the potential use of vessel density as a proxy for soil water salinity in the mangrove species Rhizophora mucronata (Rhizophoraceae) from Kenya. METHODS In a time-standardized approach, 50 wood discs from trees growing in six salinity categorie...

Wood liquefaction using an organic solvent and an acid catalyst has long been studied as a novel technique to utilize biomass as an alternative to petroleum-based products. Oxalic acid is a weaker organic acid than a mineral acid and wood liquefaction with oxalic acid as a catalyst will result in a higher amount of wood residue than that with a mineral acid. Yet the wood residue can be used as ...