Lidar-derived structural-complexity data across four experimental forests.

Structural complexity refers to the three-dimensional arrangement and variability of both biotic and abiotic components of an ecosystem. Metrics that characterize structural complexity are often used to manage various aspects of ecosystem function, such as light transmittance, wildlife habitat, and biological diversity. Additionally, these metrics aid in evaluating resilience to disturbance events, including hurricanes, bark-beetle outbreaks, and wildfire.

Aqueous Photolysis of Water-Soluble Brown Carbon from Simulated Prescribed and Wildfire Biomass Burning.

This work, as part of the Georgia Wildland fire Simulation Experiment (G-WISE) campaign, explores the aqueous photolysis of water-soluble brown carbon (W-BrC) in biomass burning aerosols from the combustion of fuel beds collected from three distinct ecoregions in Georgia: Piedmont, Coastal Plain, and Blue Ridge. Burns were conducted under conditions representative of wildfires, which are common unplanned occurrences in Southeastern forests (low fuel moisture content), and prescribed fires, which are commonly used in forest management (higher fuel moisture content). Upon exposure to radiation from UV lamps equivalent to approximately 5 h in the atmosphere, the absorption spectra of all six samples exhibited up to 40% photobleaching in the UV range (280-400 nm) and as much as 30% photo-enhancement in the visible range (400-500 nm).

Brown Carbon Emissions from Biomass Burning under Simulated Wildfire and Prescribed-Fire Conditions.

We investigated the light-absorption properties of brown carbon (BrC) as part of the Georgia Wildland-Fire Simulation Experiment. We constructed fuel beds representative of three ecoregions in the Southeastern U.S.

Inflammatory markers and body mass index amoung hispanic children.

Background And Objectives: Body mass index (BMI) is inversely proportional with adiponectin levels among adults, while insulin, C-reactive protein (CRP), interleukin 6 (IL-6), resistin and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) have been linked with elevated BMI. The role and relation of these biomarkers with BMI among a Hispanic pediatric population are less known. Thus, the objective of this study was to examine the association of inflammatory markers with the odds of overweight/obesity while controlling for several sociodemographic factors among a Hispanic youth population in Northeast Tennessee.

Integrating plant physiology into simulation of fire behavior and effects.

Wildfires are a global crisis, but current fire models fail to capture vegetation response to changing climate. With drought and elevated temperature increasing the importance of vegetation dynamics to fire behavior, and the advent of next generation models capable of capturing increasingly complex physical processes, we provide a renewed focus on representation of woody vegetation in fire models. Currently, the most advanced representations of fire behavior and biophysical fire effects are found in distinct classes of fine-scale models and do not capture variation in live fuel (i.