Treesearch

Soils on log landings can be significantly degraded as a result of harvesting equipment. We evaluated the efficacy of biochar application and subsoiling to reduce compaction and improve soil properties. Fifteen log landings were selected across three US Midwest national forests: the Hoosier National Forest in Indiana, the Mark Twain National Forest in Missouri, and the Shawnee National Forest in Illinois. Landings were divided into four treatments: (1) biochar applied on the soil surface (22.4 Mg ha −1 ), (2) subsoiling (depth of 50 cm), (3) a combination of subsoiling and biochar (22.4 Mg...

Invasive populations of Anoplophora glabripennis (Motschulsky) threaten forested systems across the globe. Eradication programs in North America can span hundreds of square kilometers, yet eradication efforts are carried out at the individual tree or stand scale. An A. glabripennis infestation was discovered in South Carolina in 2020; within this landscape, a small island was found on which 85% of A. glabripennis host trees were infested. The removal of all infested trees from the island in 2021 provided an opportunity to use this discrete population as a natural microcosm in which the...

Climate change presents challenges for forest managers in determining strategies and actions to enable forest ecosystems to adapt to rapid and uncertain change. The Adaptive Silviculture for Climate Change (ASCC) Network emerged in direct response to an acute need for experimentally robust and professionally credible examples of climate-adaptive forest management strategies. The ASCC Network advances the field of climate adaptation by applying a replicated resistance–resilience–transition and no-action framework to test coproduced, operational-scale experimental trials that incorporate...

Prescribed burning is a common management tool for both shortleaf pine and associated oak species, as they can resprout following top-kill and are adapted to frequent surface fire regimes. In Missouri, shortleaf pine often occurs with oaks in mixedwood ecosystems, though its prevalence is diminished from historic levels. With interest in restoring shortleaf pine, research is needed on specific strategies for using prescribed fire to promote shortleaf pine in mixed pine-oak ecosystems. We studied the survival and resprouting of shortleaf pine and oaks of different sizes following a prescribe...

We present the first infrasound analyses of a rangeland fire and demonstrate infrasound's potential in monitoring wildland fires. We recorded a prescribed fire in sagebrush steppe in cool, moist conditions, using eight infrasound arrays of diverse size (3–44 sensors, 10–200 m width) and distance (0–20 km), including four arrays inside the burn area. Infrasound arrays within 2 km of fires detected coherent infrasound between 1 and 10 Hz, both during active ignitions and also while existing fires continued burning during breaks in ignitions. During periods of active ignitions, the direction...

CONTEXT: Diversification of agricultural production has been proposed to address interrelated social, ecological, and economic challenges. However, definitions of agricultural diversification vary, and there has been negligible research documenting what farmers consider to be diversification. A shared understanding of agricultural diversification is needed to create common goals and support policies and programs that incorporate the vision of the agriculture community.OBJECTIVE: We examine the meaning of agricultural diversification according to agricultural stakeholders with a focus on...

The invasive emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis) is a threat to all North American ash (genus Fraxinus) trees, but wetland ecosystems dominated by black ash (F. nigra) are of particular concern to land managers. The rapid and extensive death of black ash on the landscape causes unprecedented ecological and hydrological impacts to cascade through the ecosystem. A strategy to combat such impacts and maintain these wetlands as forested is to underplant these stands with seedlings of alternative species that are capable of maturing into canopy trees. This study planted seedlings of seven...

Whole-tree harvesting, in which the trunk of the tree and woody residues from the canopy and branches are removed from the site and used to make various products, is a common harvesting practice in the northeastern United States. Concerns have arisen, however, around the long-term impact of removing this material from the forest, especially in clearcuts where all trees are harvested, as doing so could reduce soil nutrient availability and carbon. These concerns are especially relevant for poorly drained, conifer-dominated sites, which tend to be nutrient poor.One long-term study at the...

Rewetting shows promise for mitigating carbon loss from drained peatlands. However, knowledge gaps remain in rewetting impacts on gaseous carbon fluxes and factors affecting rewetting success, especially in Minnesota and the Upper Midwest, United States, despite abundant degraded peatlands presenting restoration opportunities.This study fills knowledge gaps in carbon flux from partially drained and rewetted Minnesota peatlands and quantifies environmental drivers of gaseous carbon fluxes to better estimate peatland carbon flux throughout Minnesota and the region.We paired chamber‐based...

Sensitivity to wind behaviors has been observed in marginal fire behavior in the field and using high-complexity fire models. Here we use the coupled atmospheric hydrodynamic-fire behavior model FIRETEC to simulate a marginal fire and develop 2028 one-dimensional time series from the temperature of the solid fuel, the convective heat transfer, the magnitude of the horizontal winds, and the vertical wind velocity on and around the leading edge of the fireline. We test each of these time series for chaotic signals using the Chaos 0-1 test that distinguishes between chaotic and non-chaotic...