Treesearch

Páramo peatlands are a regional reservoir of biodiversity and ecosystem services, accumulating large amounts of carbon and buffering water flows. Despite their importance, they have a long history of use and impacts including drainage for agriculture and grazing, and water withdrawal for human uses. Here we present a preliminary assessment of the conservation status of páramo peatlands in Ecuador and, using a case study, discuss peatland restoration as a tool for mitigation and adaptation to the impacts of current climate change. Through a simple index assessing the cumulative presence of...

Urban green spaces have previously been linked to reduction in crime and improvements in neighborhood environments. This study considered if the Care-A-Lot (CAL) program in Baltimore City, which incentivizes local community groups to maintain and green vacant lots, reduces violent and property crime. Compared to a 2016–2017 baseline, city block groups with CAL programs saw a significantly larger decrease in crime compared to matched block groups with no CAL programs both in 2018 and 2019. These results were found to be robust through a series of sensitivity analyses and add to the literatur...

Today, more than one-quarter of forests in the northeastern and north-central United States are characterized as mixedwoods–a mixture of hardwoods, like oak (Quercus) and maple (Acer), and softwoods, like pine (Pinus) and hemlock (Tsuga), with neither type making up more than 80 percent of forest composition. These temperate mixedwood forests spread across nearly 47 million acres in the United States, from North Dakota to Maine and Kansas to Maryland. Yet despite their prevalence, there is much to be learned about temperate mixedwood forests. A group of Northern Research Station (NRS)...

It is hard to imagine the vast expanse of the Great Lakes being anything but pristine, yet trouble roils just beneath the surface. The Great Lakes contain roughly 90 percent of the surface freshwater supply in the United States - and 20 percent of the world's freshwater supply. In recent years, increases in the use of electronics, pharmaceuticals, and personal care products has led to an increase in the pollutants that are pumped into the environment every day. Left unchecked, these pollutants can dramatically alter the future of the Great Lakes. Northern Research Station scientists and...

For the last century black cherry (Prunus serotina) has comprised a significant portion of the tree canopy across the Allegheny National Forest. But black cherry's rise to prominence has a complicated history. Following unsustainable timber harvesting in the early 20th century, clearcut forests encouraged pioneer species such as black cherry to thrive. Industrialization later increased the amount of nitrate present in the air, and the new environmental conditions further enhanced the dominance of this nitrogen-demanding species. For years, the timber industry benefited from an abundance of...

Since the late 1920s, the Forest Service has been congressionally mandated to collect, analyze, and report information on the status and trends of America's forests. This includes a suite of measurements on trees (live and dead) and other forest vegetation. Over time, this ongoing effort has evolved into the Forest Inventory and Analysis program. Today, FIA field crews routinely collect a core set of variables within plots across the country, on both public and private lands.

Evaluating genetic diversity in walnut (Juglans regia L.) populations is a rapid approach used by walnut breeding programs to distinguish superior genotypes. The present study was conducted on the walnut population of Hamedan Province, one of the richest and most genetically diverse regions in Iran, during 2018–2019. After the initial screening, 47 genotypes were selected for further evaluation of pomological and phenological traits based on International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI) descriptors. Nut and kernel weights among the selected genotypes ranged from 7.15 to 21.05 g...

Signatories to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are required to annually report economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions and removals, including the forest sector. National forest inventory (NFI) is considered the main source of data for reporting forest carbon stocks and changes to UNFCCC. However, NFI samples are often collected asynchronously across regions in intervals of 5–10 years or sub-sampled annually, both introducing uncertainties in estimating annual carbon stock changes by missing a wide range of forest disturbance and recovery processes. Here,...

The London planetree (or London plane in the UK: Platanus × hispanica) is one of the most common street trees in the world. Planetrees currently comprise nearly one-third of the street trees in Paris, and over one-tenth in New York City. London planetrees are also ubiquitous in many other cities.3 Today, the planetree is referred to as the 'big shade tree of boulevards around the world,' and it has long had a reputation as tolerant of air pollution. For instance, John Claudius Loudon suggested that planes 'bear the smoke of the city.' But street tree species selection is based on more than...

This special issue of Fungal Ecology focuses on recent exciting progress in understanding wood decay communities, and is based on the symposium on Fungal Community Structure, Dynamics and Function in Decaying Wood, which was held remotely during the 2020 Mycological Society of America (MSA) meeting (Mycology from the Cloud). About 400 audience members around the world tuned in to the symposium during the first fully remote MSA conference. Though we missed the inperson comradery, the accessibility of our fully remote symposium was notable. The symposium featured 6 speakers from several...