With help from her parents, a forest manager and a wildlife biologist, and in the company of new friend Ricky, eleven-year-old Ellie Homesly fills a field notebook with sketches and notes about nature in the woods near her home. Includes suggestions on how to keep a field notebook. A teacher's guide is available online.

Introduction to the life cycle of a tree.

With more than 200 photographs and an extensive text, Tracks in the Forest describes in detail the first logging equipment of the late 19th century, and the technological developments of the 1920s-30s and 1950s-60s -- the forerunners of 90% of all logging machines used today.

This report provides a general overview of current log sort yard operations in the United States, including an extensive literature review and information collected during on-site visits to several operations throughout the nation. Log sort yards provide many services in marketing wood and fiber by concentrating, merchandising, processing, sorting, and adding value to logs. Such operations supply forest products firms with desired raw materials, which helps improve their bottom line by reducing the number of marginal logs processed. Ultimately, sorting logs leads to better use of the available timber resources. Successful log sort yards are self-sufficient and have well-established markets and a steady supply of wood. Log sort yard concepts and analyses described in this report have broad applications.