Treesearch

Four species of bark- and wood-infesting borers (two Coleoptera and two Hymenoptera) and six parasitoid species (Hymenoptera) were reared from yellow birch (Betula alleghaniensis Britton) one year after the trees were cut and left standing in a woodlot in Ingham County, Michigan in 1986–87. The borers were species of Cerambycidae (Coleoptera) and Xiphydriidae (Hymenoptera), and hymenopteran parasitoid species of Aulacidae, Braconidae, Chalcididae, and Pteromalidae. Xiphydriophagus meyerinckii (Ratzeburg) (Pteromalidae) is a new Michigan state record. For the borers, yellow birch is a new...

Urban tree canopy is a vital component of modern cities, and many cities aspire to increase canopy cover to bolster ecosystem services. However, canopy-based ecosystem services are disproportionately provided by old, large-statured trees. Legacies of where trees have been maintained are evident in urban landscapes and loss of these older trees is not easily negated by current planting efforts. Furthermore, tree species composition varies considerably across the landscape and may determine present canopy longevity, structure, and contribution to ecosystem amenities or disamenities. In this...

Precocial young leave their nest immediately after hatch to move and forage as a group during a rapid period of development. Growth and body condition are correlated with survival; young are better able to thermoregulate as they become larger, and they are better able to escape predators as they become more mobile. Environmental conditions can influence development and ultimately survival. We evaluated weather, cover type, and temporal factors affecting northern bobwhite juvenile body condition. We captured 216 individuals from 33 broods >16 d old on five conservation areas in southwest...

Before the arrival of white-nose syndrome in North America, the northern long-eared bat (Myotis septentrionalis) was a common cavity-roosting bat species in central Appalachian hardwood forests. Two successive prescribed burns on the Fernow Experimental Forest, West Virginia, in 2008 and 2009, were shown to positively affect maternity colony day-roost availability and condition in the near-term. However, whether immediate benefits were temporary and if burned forests actually experienced an accelerated loss of trees and snags possibly suitable for bats more than background loss in unburned...

Active forest management operations, such as regeneration harvests, can reduce hazardous fuel loads and alter fuel structure, potentially minimizing extreme wildfire conditions while maintaining ecosystem services, such as wildlife habitat and water quality. Regeneration harvests of differing intensities (clearcut, high-retention shelterwood, and low-retention shelterwood) were first applied between 1995 and 1996 to three sites on the George Washington-Jefferson National Forest in the Ridge and Valley Province of Virginia, USA. Over two decades after the clearcut was conducted and 11–12...

Essentially all mature American chestnut trees in Ohio were killed by the chestnut blight in the 1920s and 1930s. However, chestnut sprouts that emerge from the base of the tree (the belowground "root collar") after the top dies are resistant to the blight while they remain small. Chestnut sprouts, though uncommon, persist in the understory of woodlands in southern and eastern Ohio today.

We present a new data set from the Marcell Experimental Forest (MEF) that compiles water isotope measurements from multiple research catchments, some of which have been studied since the 1960s. The MEF is located in northern Minnesota, USA, and is home to heavily studied and monitored forests, streams, bogs, and fens. Peat-forming systems (bogs and fens) are an important component of the MEF landscape and have a profound impact on the water cycle in these catchments. Within the last decade, analysis of stable isotopes of water (expressed as δD and δ18O) has been implemented to characterize...

Background: Despite the widespread use of prescribed fire throughout much of the southeastern USA, temporal considerations of fire behavior and its effects often remain unclear. Opportunities to burn within prescriptive meteorological windows vary seasonally and along biogeographical gradients, particularly in mountainous terrain where topography can alter fire behavior. Managers often seek to expand the number of burn days available to accomplish their management objectives, such as hazardous fuel reduction, control of less desired vegetation, and wildlife habitat establishment and...

We conducted dendroclimatic analyses and constructed future growth projections for red spruce (Picea rubensSarg.) throughout the central Appalachians in the state of West Virginia. This study involved field sampling of 18 sites across red spruce’s range in six regions throughout the Monongahela National Forest that were selected based on pairwise combinations of three latitudinal groups (north, central, and south) with two aspects (north and south). Each combination of latitudinal group and aspect was referred to as a landscape cluster. Growth was negatively impacted by high summer...

Aim: The concept of "island disharmony" has been widely applied to describe the systematic over-and under-representation of taxa on islands compared to mainland regions. Here, we explore an extension of that concept to biological invasions. We compare biogeographical patterns in native and non-native beetle (Coleoptera) assemblages from around the world to test whether beetle invasions represent a random sample of species or whether some families are more prone to invade than others. Location: Global. Methods: Numbers of non-native beetle species established in ten regions worldwide were...