Spruce

Anderson House at 42 Powers Court, St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada, is a familiar sight for those going up and down Signal Hill. The building was designated a Registered Heritage Structure by the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador on March 23, 1996. The building is named after James Anderson (c1768-1852), a sergeant in the militia, entrepreneur, and brewer of spruce beer and other temperance beverages.

In Jane Austen's novel 'Emma', written in 1815, the heroine expresses a liking for spruce beer, an alcoholic drink flavoured with an essence made from spruce trees, and a beverage Austen is known to have brewed herself, when she was staying in Southampton at the home of her brother Frank. This paper looks at the history of the sort of spruce beer Austen made, and how she is likely to have come across it.

This study focuses on the flexural behavior of timber beams externally reinforced using carbon fiber-reinforced polymers (CFRP). Linear and non-linear finite element analysis were proposed and validated by experimental tests carried out on 44 timber beams to inversely determine the material properties of the timber and the CFRP. All the beams have the same geometrical properties and were loaded under four points bending. In this paper the general commercial software ANSYS was used, and three- and two-dimensional numerical models were evaluated for their ability to describe the behavior of the solid timber beams. The linear elastic orthotropic material model was assumed for the timber beams in the linear range and the 3D nonlinear rate-independent generalized anisotropic Hill potential model was assumed to describe the nonlinear behavior of the material. As for the CFRP, a linear elastic orthotropic material model was introduced for the fibers and a linear elastic isotropic model for...

Nucleotide variation at 12–16 nuclear loci was studied in three spruce species from the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP), Picea likiangensis, P. wilsonii, and P. purpurea, and one species from the Tian Shan mountain range, P. schrenkiana. Silent nucleotide diversity was limited in P. schrenkiana and high in the three species from the QTP, with values higher than in boreal spruce species, despite their much more restricted distributions compared with that of the boreal species. In contrast to European boreal species that have experienced severe bottlenecks in the past, coalescent-based analysis suggests that DNA polymorphism in the species from the QTP and adjacent areas is compatible with the standard neutral model (P. likiangensis, P. wilsonii, and P. schrenkiana) or with population growth (P. purpurea). In order to test if P. purpurea is a diploid hybrid of P. likiangensis and P. wilsonii, we used a combination of approaches, including model-based inference of population structure, isolation-with-migration models, and recent theoretical results on the effect of introgression on the geographic distribution of diversity. In contrast to the three other species, each of which was predominantly assigned to a single cluster in the Structure analysis, P. purpurea individuals were scattered over the three main clusters and not, as we had expected, confined to the P. likiangensis and P. wilsonii clusters. Furthermore, the contribution of P. schrenkiana was by far the largest one. In agreement with this, the divergence between P. purpurea and P. schrenkiana was lower than the divergence of either P. likiangensis or P. wilsonii from P. schrenkiana. These results, together with previous ones showing that P. purpurea and P. wilsonii share the same haplotypes at both chloroplast and mitochondrial markers, suggest that P. purpurea has a complex origin, possibly involving additional species.

Mountain forests constitute one of the most diverse ecosystems, not only in Europe but also all over the world. Mountain ranges, which frequently encompass multiple countries, constitute a unique link between various natural areas, which are very often completely different from the historical point, or which are characterized by different use and management types. Although the role of mountain forests is relatively well recognized nowadays, in the distant past, these areas were poorly penetrated, mainly due to the unfavourable climate and natural topography, which discouraged not only from settling down but also from moving around. Despite the fact that mountains had been the object of interest of mining, weaving, and glassmaking industries for hundreds of years, dramatic changes in the stands in these areas were sealed by the industrial revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries. The purpose of this paper is the analysis of forest dieback process in the mountain ranges of Sudetes and Western Carpathians placed in Poland. Stress factors have been divided into three main groups, however, it should be remembered that it is a very simplified division and some factors could be partially found in the anthropogenic, as well as biotic, and even abiotic factor groups. Neither the beginning nor the end of deforestation process was defined precisely in the study, which was deliberate in taking into account constant changes in the ecosystems. Generally, three periods may be distinguished here, regarding the spruce forests dieback process. Typically anthropogenic deforestation, caused by the industrialization of the areas during the industrial revolution and earlier, deforestation in the years 1970-1980 and partially before the year 2000 (Western Carpathians) caused by a set of various stress factors and the latest period, that is, generally understood climate change. The last several years have particularly contributed to the expansion of detailed knowledge about the dependencies and the influence of abiotic, biotic, and anthropogenic factors on the health condition of spruce trees. Although models have already been developed, which describe the course of insect outbreaks, the growth and health condition of spruces, or climate factors, no model has been developed so far that would allow to depict the process of hitherto deforestation, and to enable modelling the forthcoming changes. It seems that the development of such tool, not only from the forest management point of view, would constitute a milestone on the way to precision forestry.

In the present study, the feasibility of planting ash (Fraxinus excelsior L.) and spruce (Picea abies L.) tree species was investigated for rehabilitation of the Toroq Watershed in the northeast of Iran. The estimated land suitability indices ranged from 23.95 to 71.05, and 22.47 to 69.38 for ash and spruce plantations by parametric approach, categorized into moderately suitable (S2) in the east to not suitable (N) in the middle and western parts of the study area. The values of land indices by the AHP approach varied between 35.45 to 94.09 and 34.67 to 83.98 for ash and spruce plantations ranging from highly suitable (S1) in the east to moderately suitable (S2) in the middle and scattered parts in the east and not suitable (N) in the north and southwest of the basin. The results showed that the most important limitations were climate, elevation, soil depth, and soil texture. The regression coefficient (R 2) of land suitability indices between parametric and AHP approaches for the two spices was 0.894 and 0.866 respectively. The results of the two models revealed that the moderately suitable class S2 is dominant for ash and spruce plantations in the eastern parts of the basin, while the middle and western parts of the basin were not suitable for plantation of the trees. The findings of this study may help land-use planners to rehabilitate the watershed by expanding forest plantation which ecologically tolerates extreme conditions of the region.