Toward a better understanding of climate and human impacts on late Holocene fire regimes in the Pacific Northwest, USA

In order to fully appreciate the role that fire, both natural and anthropogenic, had in shaping pre-Euro-American settlement landscapes in the Pacific Northwest (PNW), it is necessary to develop a more robust method of evaluating paleofire reconstructions. Here we demonstrate an approach that includes the identification of charcoal morphotypes (i.e. visually distinct charcoal particles), and incorporates both paleoecological and archaeological data sets, to more specifically determine both the nature of past fire regimes (i.e. fuel type and fire severity) and the likely ignition source of those fires. We demonstrate the usefulness of this approach by reconstructing the late Holocene fire and vegetation histories of Lake Oswego (Clackamas County), Oregon, and Fish Lake (Okanogan County), Washington, using macroscopic charcoal and pollen analysis of sediment cores. The histories were compared with climatic records from the PNW as well as archaeological, ethnographic, and historical records from the Lower Columbia River Valley and Southern Columbia Plateau cultural regions. Our results indicate that while centennial-to-millennial-scale climate change had limited influence on the fire regimes at the study sites during the past ∼3800 years, the use of fire by Native Americans for a variety of reasons, particularly after ca. 1200 calendar years before present (AD 750), had a far greater impact. Charcoal morphotype ratios also indicate that fires in the two watersheds were fundamentally different in their severity and impact, and led to major shifts in the forests and woodlands surrounding Lake Oswego, but helped maintain the ponderosa pine-dominated forest at Fish Lake. The elimination of fire from the two study sites during the past 100–300 years is likely the combined result of Euro-American contact and the arrival of disease in the PNW, as well as 20th-century fire suppression and grazing effects on fuel continuity, which has implications for future forest management and restoration efforts in the PNW.

A New Energy Storage Substation for the Portland to Milwaukie Light Rail Extension

The $1.4 billion Portland-Milwaukie Light Rail (PMLR) Extension Project includes a light rail alignment that travels 7.3 miles, connecting Portland State University in downtown Portland, inner Southeast Portland, Milwaukie and North Clackamas County. Revenue service on the alignment is scheduled to begin in September 2015. An energy storage substation (ESS) with super-capacitor technology manufactured by Siemens is being installed in place of a utility-connected substation at the Tacoma substation location to capture the energy generated by braking light rail vehicles and store it in energy savings mode, feeding it back to the traction power supply during vehicle acceleration. In voltage stabilization mode, the ESS will enable the rail system to maintain voltage system stability by ensuring the system voltage to remain within the required voltage ranges and prevent system disruptions due to low system voltage conditions. This paper will discuss the features of the 677KW 2.5KWH Tacoma ESS including super-capacitor based energy storage system technology, ESS equipment arrangement, protection and controls. Economic benefits of cost savings in energy (KWH) consumption and power demand (KW) charges will also be discussed. Field accepting test plans and test procedures will also be presented.

New Zealand Bittercress (Cardamine corymbosa; Brassicaceae): New to the United States

New Zealand bittercress is reported as new to the United States. While collecting specimens to determine what Cardamine species occur in the nursery trade, New Zealand bittercress was discovered in a container nursery in Wilkes County, North Carolina. The nursery tracked the shipment of contaminated plants to a wholesale nursery in Washington County, Oregon. It was subsequently confirmed that New Zealand bittercress also occurs in a nursery in Clackamas County, Oregon, and has likely been distributed throughout the United States as a contaminant in container grown ornamental plants. Thus far there have been no reports of naturalized populations outside of container nursery crop production facilities.

Nomenclatorial changes in Triaenonychidae: Sclerobunus parvus Roewer is a junior synonym of Paranonychus brunneus (Banks), Mutusnonychus Suzuki is a junior synonym of Paranonychus Briggs, and Kaolinonychinae Suzuki is a junior synonym of Paranonychinae Briggs (Opiliones: Triaenonychidae)

The harvestman species Sclerobunus parvus was described by Roewer (1931) from the Queen Charlotte Islands, British Columbia, Canada. Some forty years later, Briggs (1971) revised the Triaenonychidae of North America, but missed including Roewer’s species, which had not been mentioned in the literature since its description. Briggs (1971) recognized two subfamilies in North America, Triaenonychinae Sørensen 1886 (Briggs attributed the subfamily name to Pocock, but according to the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, Sørensen’s original proposal of the family name included the nominate subfamily) and Paranonychinae Briggs 1971. Paranonychinae included two new genera, Metanonychus Briggs 1971 and Paranonychus Briggs 1971. The latter genus was based on Sclerobunus brunneus Banks 1893, a commonly occurring species distributed from Clackamas County, Oregon, north to Atka Island, Alaska (Briggs 1971).