Treesearch

Stable property rights and the assurance that those rights will be protected, or disputed through due process, are essential for sustainable forest management, particularly for those who depend on forests for sustenance or income. With mounting pressures to convert forests to more profitable uses, such as agriculture or urban development, innovative ownership and tenure mechanisms have evolved to protect forest land in its natural state or managed condition. These mechanisms include the purchase and reservation of development rights, through payments for environmental services, or through...

Mangrove trees of the salt secreting Avicennia germinans and the non-secreting Rhizophora mangle were investigated at the northern coast of Venezuela at a low salinity site (127 mmol kg−1) and two hypersaline sites (1600–1800 mmol kg−1). Leaf sap osmolality and mass/ area ratio of both species were positively correlated, while size was negatively correlated with soil salinity. Leaf sap osmolality was always higher in Avicennia and exceeded soil solution osmolality. Salinity increased the concentration of 1D-1-O-methyl-muco-inositol (OMMI) in Rhizophora and glycinebetaine in Avicennia. The...

Un mejor manejo de las áreas protegidas requiere que los tomadores de decisiones, mantengan el estatus de manejo de las mismas, por lo que especies de interés deben ser monitoreadas. Para esto se situaron trampas cámaras e lo largo del río Santa Maura en la Reserva Natural Datanlí-El Diablo, en un gradiente de distancia hacia la carretera. Se determinó la presencia de 24 especies de vertebrados, de los cuales 10 fueron aves y 14 mamíferos, del total se determinó que el 14% eran de interés cinegético. Las especies con mayor abundancia relativa incluyeron especies generalistas principalmente,...

The unprecedented number of devastating disasters recently experienced in the United States is a clarion call to revisit how we understand our vulnerability in the face of global change, and what we are prepared to do about it. We focus on the case of Hurricane María’s impact in Puerto Rico to underscore five critical concerns in addressing vulnerability and adaptation planning: (i) vulnerability as a product of flows; (ii) how our beliefs about the capacities of ourselves and others affect local vulnerability; (iii) the role uncertainty, politics, and information access play in amplifying...

We mapped native, endemic, and introduced (i.e., exotic) tree species counts, relative basal areas of functional groups, species basal areas, and forest biomass from forest inventory data, satellite imagery, and environmental data for Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Imagery included time series of Landsat composites and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)-based phenology. Environmental data included climate, land-cover, geology, topography, and road distances. Large-scale deforestation and subsequent forest regrowth are clear in the resulting maps decades after...

Seasonal time series data from satellites are highly desired by researchers from different fields to study our Earth system. Seasonal time series data contain the temporal aspects of natural phenomena on the land surface, which are extremely helpful for discriminating different land cover types (Zhu and Liu, 2014), monitoring vegetation dynamics (Shen et al., 2011), estimating crop yields (Johnson et al., 2016), assessing environmental threats (Garrity et al., 2013), exploring human-nature interactions (Zhu and Woodcock, 2014a), and revealing ecology-climate feedbacks (Piao et al., 2015).

An extreme disturbance event is one in which any of its component disturbance forces and their interactions with affected systems have dimensions and responses that exceed the known range of variation expected of those parameters. If the exposed system does not respond or exhibits a low level response to an event, the event was not extreme to the exposed system, regardless of the dimensions of its disturbance forces. Extreme disturbance events are complex and require disaggregation to improve understanding of their effects. The areas affected by extreme events and the duration of the...

The large, highly glacierized Copper River basin is an important water resource for the south-central region of Alaska. Thus, information is needed on the reaction of its hydrologic timing and streamflow volumes to historical changes in climate, in order to assess the possible impact of future changes. However, the basin is remote, and therefore, it has proved difficult to collect field data in a frequent temporal and spatial manner. An extension of the distributed-parameter, physical-process code Precipitation Runoff Modeling System, PRMSglacier, has been specifically developed to...

The Luquillo Mountains of eastern Puerto Rico are home to the only tropical rainforest managed by the United States Forest Service, with cloud-immersed forests historically occupying the highest elevations. However, within the past 50 yr, studies of the Luquillo cloud forest have suggested an increase in cloud base heights (CBH), although the CBH in the area was not quantified until recently. The present work uses radiosonde observations from nearby San Juan, Puerto Rico, to contextualize the present-day CBH within a 42 yr (1975−2016) proxy record and determine evidence for rising cloud...