Treesearch

The first time I read about lab-grown meat—about seven years ago—I laughed and thought, "That’s ridiculous!" The cost was astronomical: $280,000 for a single hamburger patty! How would it be scaled up from a petri dish in a lab to commercial production? And who'd want to eat this reportedly unpalatable product? Fast forward to today, and the cost of lab-grown meat has dropped dramatically, quality and taste have improved rapidly, and it's being served in restaurants for the first time (Phys.Org 2020). Many start-ups are working to commercialize "slaughter-free" meat, which could someday...

Invasive forest plants are a growing concern because of their perceived and actual negative ecological, economic, and social impacts. To effectively manage invasive plants in forest ecosystems, it is paramount to understand the management decisions made by family forest owners (FFOs), who collectively own 36% of forestlands in the United States. We contribute to the growing literature on invasive plant management and the factors that influence FFOs' likelihood to manage invasive plants on their property by incorporating protection motivation theory (PMT; Rogers 1975). Protection Motivation...

We used dendrochronological methods and remnant fire-scarred red pines (Pinus resinosa Ait.) to reconstruct historical fire regime characteristics and relate these findings to past climate, human land use changes, and vegetation for a landscape in northern Minnesota, USA. A total of 314 fire scars were dated, representing 56 unique fire events from 1565 to 1967. In the period prior to fire exclusion (1535–1935), fire intervals ranged from 1 to 40 years across the landscape and the mean fire interval was 6.6 years. The majority of fire scars (74%) occurred in the dormant season. Climate...

Humans move species around the globe, both intentionally and unintentionally, and biological invasions have been accelerating for many species groups (Seebens et al. 2017). While most nonnative species (NNS) have little impact within their invaded habitat, many exhibit extraordinary population growth and adversely affect species with which they share no evolutionary history. NNS can also have significant negative economic impacts, estimated at $162 billion ($2019) annually in the United States (Pimentel, Zuniga, and Morrison 2005) and up to 12 percent of GDP in some developed countries...

Stewardship consists of acts of claims-making on space and caretaking of place that activate urban environments to function as social infra-structure. While stewardship practices are enacted by actors across the governance network, there is a need to better understand the role of civil society. Civic stewardship groups care and advocate for green, grey, and blue spaces, and can strengthen social trust and foster civic engagement. We conducted semi-structured interviews (n = 26) with a sample of New York City civic stewardship groups from a previous survey dataset (n = 754); the sample was...

Trees and urban forests remove particulate matter (PM) from the air through the deposition of particles on the leaf surface, thus helping to improve air quality and reduce respiratory problems in urban areas. Leaf deposited PM, in turn, is either resuspended back into the atmosphere, washed off during rain events or transported to the ground with litterfall. The net amount of PM removed depends on crown and leaf characteristics, air pollution concentration, and weather conditions, such as wind speed and precipitation. Many existing deposition models, such as i-Tree Eco, calculate PM2.5...

Background: With the introduction of the Trillion Trees Initiative and similar programs, forests' ability to absorb carbon dioxide is increasingly in the spotlight. Many states have mandates to develop climate action plans, of which forest carbon is an important component, and planners need current information on forest carbon stocks and rates of change at relevant spatial scales. To this end, we examine rates of average annual change in live aboveground tree carbon in different forest type groups and provide state-wide and regional summaries of current live tree carbon stock and rates of...

The juniper (Juniperus ashei) - oak (Quercus sp.) woodlands of central Texas are susceptible to crown fire due to climate change, land use change, and fire suppression. Low-intensity prescribed fire is one method used to reduce fuel loads and lower the risk of crown fire. Better knowledge of the impacts of prescribed fire on fuel loads, vegetation structure, and the endangered golden-cheeked warbler (Setophaga chrysoparia), a songbird that breeds exclusively in these woodlands, is needed to inform management decisions. We conducted a before-after controlimpact study on three plot-pairs...

Impact assessment is an important and cost-effective tool for assisting in the identification and prioritization of invasive alien species. With the number of alien and invasive alien species expected to increase, reliance on impact assessment tools for the identification of species that pose the greatest threats will continue to grow. Given the importance of such assessments for management and resource allocation, it is critical to understand the uncertainty involved and what effect this may have on the outcome. Using an uncertainty typology and insects as a model taxon, we identified and...

Urban tree cover provides benefits to human health and well-being, but previous studies suggest that tree cover is often inequitably distributed. Here, we use National Agriculture Imagery Program digital ortho photographs to survey the tree cover inequality for Census blocks in US large urbanized areas, home to 167 million people across 5,723 municipalities and other Census-designated places. We compared tree cover to summer land surface temperature, as measured using Landsat imagery. In 92% of the urbanized areas surveyed, low-income blocks have less tree cover than high-income blocks. On...