Trembling aspen (Populus tremuloides Michx.) regeneration dynamics including sprout production, growth, and clone size were measured to determine the effects of fire on small aspen clone persistence following a mixedseverity wildfire in the Black Hills, South Dakota. Four years postfire, 10 small, isolated aspen clones per low and high fire severity classes were compared with 10 unburned clones...

Quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides) biomass has declined in Yellowstone National Park (YNP) in the past century. We installed permanent belt transects (plots) for long-term monitoring of aspen stands both within and outside of established wolf pack territories on YNP’s northern range to determine if reintroduced wolves are influencing elk browsing patterns and aspen regeneration through a troph...

Ecologists have debated over the past 65 years whether quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides Michx.) has or has not declined in abundance, vigor, or regeneration in western North America. Many studies have provided divergent interpretations of the condition of aspen forests, leading to difficulty in translating this ecological information into management recommendations. To reconcile these contras...

BACKGROUND Wood cell walls are rich in cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin. Hence, they are important sources of renewable biomass for producing energy and green chemicals. However, extracting desired constituents from wood efficiently poses significant challenges because these polymers are highly cross-linked in cell walls and are not easily accessible to enzymes and chemicals. RESULTS We sh...

Mixed plastic waste is challenging for any recycling process. Here, an enzymatic process compared with a biotechnological upcycling valorizing mixed constituted by PLA, PET, and PP. Both routes are modeled in Aspen Plus, analyzed bottlenecks, cost drivers, sensitivity regarding microbial performance. While only viable uniform feedstock, operating at optimized conditions reveals the potential to...

(Acryloylamino)ethyl soyate is a soybean oil-based acrylic monomer (SBM) with versatile properties for applications in polymeric materials. To explore the economic feasibility of bio-based monomers as potential replacement commercial petro-counterpart, this study presents conceptual process design and scale-up SBMs production. Process simulation was conducted by Aspen Plus through an integrated...

In western North America, quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides) is the most common hardwood in montane landscapes. Fire suppression, grazing and wildlife management practices, and climate patterns of the past century are all potential threats to aspen coverage in this region. If aspen-dependent species are losing habitat, this raises concerns about their long-term viability. Though lichens have a...

Age-structure analysis of aspen (Populus tremuloides) was conducted on Rocky Mountain elk (Cervus elaphus) winter range in the northern Yellowstone area by collecting increment cores from aspen trees in Yellowstone National Park, the Gallatin National Forest, and the Sunlight/Crandall area of the Shoshone National Forest. Our goal was to compare aspen age structure for elk winter range in the p...

We examined bird-habitat relationships within and across a range of aspen habitats in four major watersheds in the eastern Sierra Nevada mountains of California and Nevada to identify habitat features of importance to aspen-breeding birds. Using point counts and vegetation assessments from 462 individual stations between 2001 and 2003 allowed us to investigate important habitat features at wate...