Treesearch

The US Gulf Coastal Plain is a region of diverse forests and management systems and dynamic land use changes. These drivers affect carbon (C) stocks at ecosystem to regional scales, in turn affecting processes such as forest regeneration, hydrologic and biogeochemical cycling, and social and economic systems. We quantified land use change and forest management effects on C stocks in the Gulf Coastal Plain, focusing on soils, using two complementary approaches: meta-analysis of published literature and analysis of forest inventory data. Land use change had larger effects than forest...

Fire suppression in the upper U.S. Midwest has led to the expansion of flammable coniferous ladder fuels, necessitating precise tracking of conifer species basal area (BA) for fire risk management. This study benchmarks four subset-selection pipelines—xPLS, GA-xPLS, RF-xPLS, and SVR-xPLS—to optimize the fusion of high-dimensional, collinear data from Sentinel-2, Landsat-9, and LiDAR sensors. Using 141 field plots in Minnesota’s Kawishiwi Ranger District of the Superior National Forest, we evaluated 175 predictors against eight BA response variables. Results show that RF-xPLS provided the...

Forests can occur across a continuum of urban-rural land-use contexts. Forests in cities (also referred to as forest patches, urban woodlots, urban forest fragments, or urban forested natural areas) are ecologically akin to wildland forests, but located in dense, urban landscapes. Here, we examine the opportunities and constraints for managing oak forests in cities to demonstrate the value of leveraging urban forests to develop and test adaptive management strategies for oak forests. Oaks dominate eastern United States forest types but face widespread regeneration failure across the...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Forest Service, Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program provides this resource update yearly as an overview of forest resources in Minnesota. These estimates are derived from field data collected across a systematic network of fixed-radius forest monitoring plots located on both public and private land. New updates are provided annually as a subset of plots within the State are remeasured. Each year, field crews visit and measure a subset of all FIA plots across the entire State (the size of the subset varies by State and year). Combining all...

In the northeastern United States, both hardwood and conifer forests have developed on sites with contrasting soils, allowing an examination of the effect of site and forest type on ecosystem nutrient cycling. We measured biomass production and nutrient fluxes in northern hardwood and conifer stands at three sites differing in soil fertility. We found that leaf, root, and wood concentrations of calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg), and potassium reflected differences in soil base cation availability, while concentrations of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) were more consistent across sites....

Observations of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO 2) are expected to play a critical role in monitoring, reporting, and verification designed to track progress toward the reduction goals of greenhouse gas emissions. In this study, we construct a comprehensive regional carbon budget for seven National Climate Assessment regions of the contiguous United States (CONUS) over 2015–2020. We demonstrate that lateral carbon movement across regions, along with their resulting endpoint CO 2 emissions, represent a major contributor to the interpretation of regional net surface‐atmosphere fluxes of CO 2...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Forest Service, Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program provides this resource update yearly as an overview of forest resources in North Dakota. These estimates are derived from field data collected across a systematic network of fixed-radius forest monitoring plots located on both public and private land. New updates are provided annually as a subset of plots within the State are remeasured. Each year, field crews visit and measure a subset of all FIA plots across the entire State (the size of the subset varies by State and year). Combining...

Tension wood (TW), a type of reaction wood that develops in angiosperm trees in response to gravistimulation, serves as an ideal model for investigating the regulatory mechanisms underlying xylem cell differentiation and cell wall deposition. The initial biological signals that induce the formation of reaction wood in response to gravitational stimuli remain poorly understood. In this study, we utilized pharmacological and genetic approaches to modulate Ca 2+ levels in hybrid white poplar ( Populus alba × P . glandulosa ) and examine the role of calcium signaling during the early stages of...

Though a minor forest pest in its native range in Asia, the emerald ash borer (EAB), Agrilus planipennis Fairmaire, causes widespread ash (Fraxinus spp) mortality throughout its invaded range in North America and Europe. The rapid range expansion demonstrated by EAB suggests this beetle possesses extraordinary tolerance for a broad range of climatic conditions. While previous studies have measured the cold tolerance of overwintering EAB larvae, none have considered the effect of developmental stage or diapause condition on cold hardiness. By testing the supercooling point (SCP) of lab-reare...

The influence of invasive plant species (IPS) on forest ecosystems has been of sufficient concern to warrant data acquisition on their presence and abundance. These data are needed at various spatial scales for both land management and policy purposes. One potential source of data are national forest inventories (NFIs) that often record IPS observations on sample plots that span relatively large spatial and temporal extents, thus providing data users with a wide range of analytical opportunities to meet desired information needs. In the NFI of the USA, which is conducted by the USA Forest...