Reference - General

The survey on values, objectives, beliefs, and attitudes, implemented as a module of the National Survey on Recreation and the Environment, asked over 7,000 respondents nationwide about their values with respect to public lands, objectives for the management of these lands, beliefs about the...

The survey on values, objectives, beliefs, and attitudes, implemented as a module of the National Survey on Recreation and the Environment, asked over 7,000 respondents nationwide about their values with respect to public lands, objectives for the management of these lands, beliefs about the...

This report highlights key findings from the most recent (2001-2005) data collected by the Forest Inventory and Analysis Program across all forest land in California. We summarize and interpret basic resource information such as forest area, ownership, volume, biomass, and carbon stocks; structure and...

The socioeconomic monitoring program of the Pacific Northwest Interagency Regional Monitoring Program went through three phases of development between 1999 and 2005. Volume VI provides a history of the socioeconomic monitoring program, detailing each phase of its development and discussing challenges associated with socioeconomic...

One of the Northwest Forest Plan's socioeconomic goals was to protect the forest values and environmental qualities associated with late-successional, old-growth, and aquatic ecosystems. In Volume V we address the topic of forest protection from the socioeconomic perspective. A literature review revealed that between...

One of the Northwest Forest Plan (the Plan) socioeconomic goals was to promote interagency collaboration and agency-citizen collaboration in forest management. This volume focuses on agency-citizen collaboration under the Plan. Two formal institutions were set up to promote agency-citizen collaboration in forest management: provincial...

The Interior Northwest Landscape Analysis System (INLAS) links a number of resource, disturbance, and landscape simulations models to examine the interactions of vegetative succession, management, and disturbance with policy goals. The effects of natural disturbance like wildfire, herbivory, forest insects and diseases, as well...

This Manual establishes requirements for the physical protection of interests under the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) purview ranging from facilities, buildings, Government property, and employees to national security interests such as classified information, special nuclear material (SNM), and nuclear weapons. A graded approach...

This report summarizes the results of a 2004 analysis of county-level eligibility for financial and technical assistance through the USDA Forest Service Economic Recovery program and contrasts those results to the initial eligibility analysis performed in 1993.Author: Susan L. Odell,Krista M. GebertISBN-10: 1511539860ISBN-13: 9781511539869Publisher:...

Wildland fire managers need better estimates of fuel loading so they can accurately predict potential fire behavior and effects of alternative fuel and ecosystem restoration treatments. This report presents the development and evaluation of a new fuel sampling method, called the photoload sampling technique,...

Stereo photographs, hemispherical photographs, and stand data are presented with associated biomass and canopy fuel characteristics for five Interior West conifer stands. Canopy bulk density, canopy base height, canopy biomass by component, available canopy fuel load, and vertical distribution of canopy fuel are presented...

Changing Times included a review of early Station history, touches on changing societal perspectives and how things are now done differently, how the Station has changed physically and organizationally, technology transfer, a sampling of major characters, and how some Station research have been applied,...

Pulpwood constitutes more than half the industrial timber products harvested annually in the Lake States (Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin) and is an important product in the Central States (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, and Missouri) and the Plain States (Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota).Author:...

The North Central Research Station's Forest Inventory and Analysis (NCFIA) program began fieldwork for the fifth forest inventory of Kansas' forest resources in 2001. This inventory initiated the new annual inventory system in which one-fifth of the field plots (considered one panel) in the...

The Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009 (H.R. 2, CHIPRA) was first passed in the House on January 14, 2009, and an amended version was passed in the Senate on January 29, 2009. On February 4, 2009, the House passed H.R. 2...

The SBA administers several programs to support small businesses, including loan guaranty programs to enhance small business access to capital; contracting programs to increase small business opportunities in federal contracting; direct loan programs for businesses, homeowners, and renters to assist their recovery from natural...

Medicare is a federal insurance program that pays for covered health care services of most individuals aged 65 and over and certain disabled persons. In 2013, the program is expected to cover 52 million persons (43 million aged and 9 million disabled) at a...

The international workshop on monitoring forest degradation in Southeast Asia provided a forum for discussion of the technical, social and political challenges and successes that have occurred during recent work in sub-national forest degradation monitoring. The 2012 workshop, held in Bangkok, Thailand, followed recent...

DOD's Real Property Management Program is governed by statute and DOD regulations, directives, and instructions that establish real property accountability and financial reporting requirements. These laws, regulations, directives, and instructions-a selection of which are discussed below-require DOD and the military departments to maintain a...

Reclamation has carried out its mission to manage, develop, and protect water and related resources in 17 western states since 1902. The agency has led or provided assistance in constructing most of the large dams and water diversion structures in the West for the...

The United States shares over 1,900 miles of border with Mexico, with Arizona and South Texas sharing 387 and 697 miles of that border respectively. The border with Mexico and these two states includes different types of terrain that represent a significant challenge to...

The DRC is a vast, mineral-rich nation with an estimated population of about 75 million people and an area that is roughly one-quarter the size of the United States, according to the UN. Since its independence in 1960, the DRC has undergone political upheaval,...

IRS has reported a substantial increase in IDT refund fraud; however, it is unclear whether this reported increase is due to an overall increase in IDT refund fraud, to an improvement in IRS's ability to detect IDT refund fraud, or to a combination of...

While alcohol-impaired driving fatalities have declined from over 21,113 in 1982 to 10,322 in 2012, the proportion of such fatalities as a percent of total traffic-related fatalities has remained relatively constant-between 30 and 32 percent-over the past 15 years. Congress has targeted this persistent...

U.S. diplomatic missions have faced numerous attacks in recent years, resulting in legal and policy changes. According to DS, between January 1998 and December 2013, there were 336 attacks against U.S. personnel and facilities. Several of those attacks resulted in the deaths of U.S....

The Department of Justice's (DOJ) Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) requested about $6.9 billion in fiscal year 2014 to provide for the custody and care of an inmate population that has increased from about 24,000 in fiscal year 1980 to over 216,000 in July...

The federal government's increasing demand for IT led to a dramatic rise in the number of federal data centers and a corresponding increase in operational costs. According to OMB, the federal government had 432 data centers in 1998 and more than 1,100 in 2009....

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank Act) created the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection-also known as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)-to regulate the offering and provision of consumer financial products or services under the federal consumer financial laws. According...

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA),1 which was enacted in March 2010, includes provisions to expand access to public and private health insurance-including through the creation of health insurance exchanges-and made a number of changes affecting the provision of private health insurance.Author:...

Oil and natural gas are found in a variety of geologic formations distributed across the country, such as shale and tight sandstone.3 Shale plays-sets of discovered or undiscovered oil and natural gas accumulations or prospects that exhibit similar geological characteristics-are located within basins, which...

In the fall of 2012, the remnants of Hurricane Sandy caused widespread damage to infrastructure across multiple states and affected millions of people. Damage included flooding in the nation's financial center that affected major transportation systems and caused widespread and prolonged power outages. The...

The Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980 (PRA) established OIRA as an office within OMB. OIRA is responsible for the coordinated review of executive agency rulemakings to ensure that regulations are consistent with applicable laws, the President's priorities, and the principles set forth in executive...

The Organization of American States (OAS) is the oldest multilateral regional organization in the world. It was founded in 1948 by the United States and 20 Latin American nations to serve as a forum for addressing issues of mutual concern. Over time, the organization...

The Medal of Honor is the nation's highest military award for bravery. It is awarded by the President in the name of Congress. For this reason, it is often referred to as the Congressional Medal of Honor. Since it was first presented in 1863,...

Future A2/AD challenges are part of a security environment that will be characterized by increasing complexity, uncertainty, and rapid change, according to DOD. Further, national security challenges will continue to arise from ongoing concerns such as violent extremism, the proliferation of weapons of mass...

Since passage of the Higher Education Act of 1965, a broad array of federal student aid programs, including loan programs, have been available to help students finance the cost of postsecondary education.6 Currently, several types of federal student loans administered by Education make up...

DHS's OCHCO is responsible, in broad terms, for the strategy, oversight, and planning of DHS employee training and development. At the same time, each DHS component, such as CBP and TSA, also has its own human capital office and training and development functions. In...

TCB is usually defined broadly to include all types of development assistance that positively affect a country's ability to secure benefits from international trade. Such assistance includes addressing the regulatory environment for business, trade, and investment, constraints such as low capacity for production and...

According to its 2010 Nuclear Energy Research and Development Roadmap: A Report to Congress, NE's primary mission is to advance nuclear power as a resource capable of meeting the nation's energy supply, environmental, and energy security needs by resolving technical, cost, safety, proliferation resistance,...

Radiological sources are used throughout the world for medical and industrial purposes. Until the 1950s, only naturally occurring radioactive materials, such as radium-226, were available for use in radiological sources. Since then, sources containing radioactive material produced artificially in nuclear reactors and accelerators have...

The greatest terrorist threat in East Africa currently emanates from Somalia. This country, which has lacked a stable government since 1991, created the environment that provided a safe haven for al Qaeda and led to the rise of al Shabaab. Between 1998 and 2012,...

Executive Order 12866 directs federal agencies to assess the potential costs and benefits of their significant regulatory actions, consisting of several categories of regulatory actions, including those likely to result in a rule that may have an annual effect on the economy of $100...

Sales of locally produced foods comprise a small but growing part of U.S. agricultural sales. USDA estimates that farm-level value of local food sales totaled about $4.8 billion in 2008, or about 1.6% of the U.S. market for agricultural products. An estimated total of...

The EHCY program is the key federal education program targeted to homeless children and youth, and, in school year 2011-12, more than 1.1 million were enrolled in our nation's public schools, according to Education data. For purposes of the program, a homeless child or...

U.S. attention to terrorism in Latin America intensified in the aftermath of the September 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, with an increase in bilateral and regional cooperation. In its 2013 Country Reports on Terrorism (issued in April 2014), the State Department...

Regulation is one of the principal tools the federal government uses to implement public policy. Agencies' rulemaking processes generally share three basic phases: (1) initiation of rulemaking actions, (2) development of proposed rules, and (3) issuance of final rules. Agencies' rulemaking processes include opportunities...

PPACA provides for the establishment of health insurance exchanges, or marketplaces, where consumers can compare and select private health insurance plans. The act also expands the availability of subsidized health care coverage. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the net federal cost of coverage provisions...

This report is volume 2 of a two-volume ecological assessment of grassland ecosystems in the Southwestern United States, and it is part of a series of planned publications addressing major ecosystems of the Southwest. Volume 1, An Assessment of Grassland Ecosystem Conditions in the...

Pulpwood production in the Lake States (Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin) remained at 9.8 million cords in 2005, with 90 percent of that total from roundwood and 10 percent from the residue of wood-using mills. Aspen remained the dominant species harvested for pulpwood with 3.6...

The International Monetary Fund (IMF), conceived at the Bretton Woods conference in July 1944, is the multilateral organization focused on the international monetary system. Created in 1946 with 46 members, it has grown to include 188 countries. The IMF has six purposes that are...