Treesearch

In cities across the world, urban environmental stewardship efforts are increasingly popular activities that citizens and non-governmental organizations take to address and improve the environmental health and quality of life of their urban environment. Urban environmental stewardship is defined as the act of civic groups of conserving, managing, monitoring, advocating for, and educating the public about a wide range of quality of life issues in urban area through, for example, tree planting, stream restoration, education campaigns, water quality monitoring, to name a few. Traditionally...

Puerto Rico’s infrastructure collapsed when exposed to the forces of hurricane María. The event also changed the course of rivers, altered the topography of sectors of the island, flooded lowlands and parts of uplands, and the ocean surge changed beach profiles and collapsed structures built close to the ocean. Islanders were left without power, water, and communications, and without access to cash and government services such as health and protection. People resurrected a life style and survival techniques thought to have been left behind in a past already forgotten by many. Complex...

At a “clean air” trade winds site in northeastern Puerto Rico, we found an apparent paradox: atmospheric total mercury (THg) deposition was highest of any site in the USA Mercury Deposition Network, but assimilation into the local food web was quite low. Avian blood THg concentrations (n = 31, from eight species in five foraging guilds) ranged widely from 0.2 to 32 ng g−1 (median of 4.3 ng g−1 ). Within this population, THg was significantly greater at a low-elevation site near a wetland compared to an upland montane site, even when the comparison was limited to a single species. Overall,...

El huracán Otto, registrado históricamente como el huracán que tocó tierra firme más al sur en Centroamérica, fue un fenómeno de categoría 3 que impacto el sureste de Nicaragua el 24 de noviembre del 2016. Para describir los efectos del huracán en la avifauna, se realizaron en la Estación Biológica La Lupe conteos de aves antes y después del paso del fenómeno. En los sitios que se realizaron las observaciones, se catalogaron los hábitats como bosque maduro y joven de acuerdo a la diversidad florística y DAP, y se anotó el estrato vertical en el que se observaban. Se determinaron los grupos...

The world´s urbanization forecast shows that 60% of the human population will be living in cities by 2050 (United Nations et al. 2017). This growth will negatively impact natural forests surrounding urban areas and will contribute to losses of biodiversity, ecosystem functions, and ecosystem services. Urban green infrastructure is often associated with improvements to city aesthetics and even with improvements in resident (Kabisch and van den Bosch 2017).

Hurricanes generate disturbances in forests such as canopy opening, fallen trees and leaves which alter physicochemical characteristics of the habitat. Litter decomposition depends primarily on the interaction among climate, litter quality and biota, as a consequence any change in habitats will result in changes in these factors. Our objective is to evaluate the effects of hurricane driven changes to forests on green litter decomposition, decomposer communities and nutrient mineralization. For this study, three blocks were selected, each with two plots of 20m x 20m, one plot was used for...

Coffee is the second largest export product of developing countries and is one of the ten most important cultivated crops in Puerto Rico, especially in the mountainous region. The coffee berry borer (CBB) Hypothenemus hampei Ferrari (1967), which arrived in Puerto Rico in 2007, is considered the most destructive pest in all coffee producing areas worldwide. The control of CBB is an enormous challenge because this insect spends most of its life inside the coffee berry, even, the use of insecticides has proved ineffective. Therefore, the development and implementation of biological control...

It is well understood that complex abiotic and biotic factors influence soil dynamics. To better understand these interactions, the ability to discuss focal taxa at a species level could be incredibly informative, albeit difficult to accomplish due to limited knowledge of existing taxa diversity. The utilization of microhabitats by different species may be important in explaining community compositions among forest types. Collembolans represent a unique focus group to help understand soil dynamics because they respond strongly to physico-chemical and/or biological changes that occur within...

The intensification of agricultural land and the massive use of synthetic fertilizers to increase crop productivity represents a global concern. The concern is whether an acceptable standard level of environmental and/or ecological quality can be met and maintained while simultaneously intensifying production through chemical inputs. Though useful, studies have shown the intensification of land use through mechanization, agrochemical inputs, and unsustainable crop management practices provoke harmful impacts on the environment. These effects are mainly contamination of surface and groundwat...

Tropical forests exchange more carbon dioxide with the atmosphere than any other terrestrial biome on Earth. Yet, uncertainty in the projected global carbon balance over the next century is ~3 times greater for the tropics than for any other latitude. Our poor knowledge of tropical plant physiological responses to climate change – particularly photosynthetic responses – has been identified as one of the greatest sources of uncertainty in multiple efforts to estimate and forecast the global terrestrial carbon sink. Furthermore, tropical regions are expected to experience temperatures beyond...